by Steve Jacobs, Jim Hillgren, and Mark Zabel
It's ironic that Six Sigma--a discipline devoted to making work processes explicit so that they can be improved--doesn't clearly define how executive-level sponsors should work.
In the absence of a defined role, many sponsors default to a relatively passive approach. Their company's Six Sigma implementation then goes without essential proactive guidance, develops certain predictable shortcomings, and generates disappointing business value. You can change all that. By applying straight- forward, practical strategies, you can keep your Six Sigma implementation squarely on the road to achieving its full potential.
Six Sigma implementations fail to achieve their full potential for the following reasons:
• Six Sigma execution is too complex.
• Six Sigma projects bite off too much, too soon.
• Companies continue reinforcing old behaviors, which slows change and undermines lasting improvement.
Unfortunately, these reasons are both common and largely unrecognized. As an executive sponsor of Six Sigma, you're in a position to steer your own implementation clear of these pitfalls, so be proactive. Champion simplicity during the implementation. Maintain clear standards for project scope and focus. Require project teams to specify how your company will initiate and reinforce the new behaviors needed to attain and sustain targeted process improvements.
Of the thousands of companies currently implementing Six Sigma, many achieve results that meet or exceed their expectations. Is your company among them? If not, you might be wondering if Six Sigma is really all it's cracked up to be. Don't be too quick to blame the tool. Many organizations have demonstrated that Six Sigma can yield remarkable results if it's effectively applied. You, as a proactive Six Sigma sponsor, can be the key to achieving its full potential.
Let's take a closer look at the reasons why Six Sigma fails.
• Six Sigma execution is too complex. We often hear that Six Sigma is too complicated--that many projects are equivalent to shooting a rabbit with an elephant gun. Many Six Sigma teams concoct overly complex solutions to simple projects. Novice practitioners, in particular, may feel that it's their duty to apply every tool in the Six Sigma toolbox. More experienced practitioners often succumb to the siren call of sophisticated techniques, even though just as much or more might be accomplished by using simple tools, such as process maps, Pareto analysis, simple control charts, work breakdown structures, and fishbone diagrams.
• Six Sigma projects bite off too much, too soon. Similarly, many Six Sigma teams try to accomplish too much too soon, especially when they feel pressure from management to produce big results in a hurry. A series of small, well-focused projects often gets better results more quickly than a single mega project.
For example, a company facing large, persistent backlogs set a target for each of its divisions to "reduce transaction backlogs by 50 percent." One division achieved that goal through incremental steps. It allowed its Six Sigma team to pursue the project in focused, manageable phases. In the end, the department reduced its average backlog from 45,000-60,000 transactions to 2,000-3,000. It exceeded its target and did so in a short period of time. Another division's managers required their project team to pursue the targeted improvement all at once. After several projects failed, the managers settled for a more prosaic solution: Extra people were hired to work the backlogs down.
• Companies continue reinforcing old behaviors that slow change and undermine lasting improvement . Even as they rigorously apply the define, measure, analyze, improve, and control (DMAIC) methodology to revamp their processes, many companies do little to systematically identify new behaviors that will be needed to fully realize improvements, or to clarify how these new behaviors will be encouraged and sustained over time. For instance, organizations often neglect to evolve their performance metrics, employee-reward systems, or week-to-week leadership practices. As a result, performers are offered little or no incentive to adapt their behaviors to a new process. In fact, managers and employees are often strongly (though unintentionally) reinforced to maintain the status quo.
Front-line managers covertly believe that it's in their best interest for the new process to underperform, especially when Six Sigma-driven solutions appear to diminish their authority or influence. Further, any change in how work is done may carry an implication that managers had previously been doing something wrong. Embracing a Six Sigma-devised solution may feel like admitting that a team of outsiders was needed to correct the flaws that arose under the manager's watch.
Employees, meanwhile, may be required to learn new skills and procedures, lose some discretion and control over how they do their jobs, or struggle to align a new process with old processes that are no longer compatible. When a difficulty arises with a new process, an employee may even "save the day" by reverting to the old way of getting things done.
In sum, the promised benefits of Six Sigma-driven change may sound inspiring, and yet be perceived by affected performers as delayed gratification with only vague personal relevance. Nearly all the immediate and tangible consequences performers experience, by contrast, strongly reinforce business as usual. The result? People at all levels are motivated not to change how they work, even as Six Sigma projects strive to drive major changes in work processes. No wonder so many Six Sigma implementations fail to achieve their full potential.
As an executive sponsor of Six Sigma, you're uniquely positioned to steer your Six Sigma initiative clear of these common pitfalls.
Many Six Sigma sponsors settle into a largely ceremonial role. They listen to presentations, rubber-stamp proposals, review reports, and offer project teams the occasional word of encouragement. Who can doubt that such passive approaches diminish Six Sigma effectiveness?
The schematic deployment map in figure 1 highlights a few steps that you can take to help your company attain more substantial and lasting business value from Six Sigma projects. These steps are recommended whether you're just now launching your initiative or are midstream in your efforts.
Urge all Six Sigma project teams to consider the simplest possible solutions first. Specify that complex and sophisticated approaches should be employed only when there's good reason to think that simple solutions will prove ineffective.
Just as important, projects should be scoped to pursue realistic and attainable goals. Stress that although your company values big breakthroughs, you discourage projects that are unrealistically ambitious. Emphasize that your Six Sigma strategy envisions big results in small increments.
State that all Six Sigma project teams should identify and address the critical-path behaviors needed to implement their solutions. Critical-path behaviors are the vital few actions leaders and key performers must take for Six Sigma solutions to attain and sustain targeted results. Six Sigma project plans should always address critical-path behaviors--especially those that aren't likely to occur without new forms of positive reinforcement.
In many companies, Six Sigma training teaches participants how to use individual tools but offers little guidance on when to use them during the course of DMAIC, which tools might work in a given situation, or how to combine tools for maximum effect. The result, as previously noted, is that many teams use the whole Six Sigma toolbox for every problem.
Similarly, Six Sigma training should prepare project teams to pinpoint the critical-path behaviors required to attain and sustain their targeted process improvements. You may also provide critical-path behavior training to leaders who will be affected by Six Sigma solutions.
To reinforce that your stated requirements are real, no projects should be approved until they comply with your standards for project optimization (e.g., simplicity, scope, and focus) and reinforcement of critical-path behaviors. Enforcing those standards will safeguard against unfocused, unrealistic, and incomplete projects that enervate rather than elevate your company's performance.
Sitting through a Six Sigma project team update can be a humdrum experience. Slide after slide depicts detailed data and analysis. The sponsor listens politely, nodding from time to time to feign deep comprehension. When the opportune moment arises, he inquires about the one aspect of the team's work he feels fully qualified to explore: results. "Is the project on track to hit its targets?" "Will there be delays?" With these questions, many Six Sigma sponsors unintentionally convey that results are all they really care about, and that they're impatient to see the project generate those tangible outcomes. This misunderstanding, in turn, influences project teams to cut corners and engage in other self-defeating behaviors.
Contrast this with a sponsor (such as yourself) who proactively clarifies project implementation standards. You enter project reviews with your own agenda. You can ask:
• "Why did you select the tools that you're applying?"
• "How are you combining those tools for maximum effects?"
• "What's your strategy for making your project work effectively, as well as efficiently, in terms of time and results?"
• "Are you confident that the planned project scope is sound, or should we consider making adjustments?"
• "What new behaviors will be required to successfully initiate and then sustain the improvements that you've targeted?"
• "How will those new behaviors be communicated, initiated, and reinforced?"
Indeed, Six Sigma sponsors should be dogged on the subject of motivation:
• "Have you anticipated the positive and negative consequences that people will experience as we implement your proposed solutions?"
• "How will we ensure that the positive consequences outweigh the negative?"
• "What in your action plan ensures that individuals will want to do what we expect of them? Are we engaged in wishful thinking?"
Such questions may make project teams uncomfortable at first because you'll be challenging them to think beyond the realm of customary Six Sigma tools. But teams will soon learn to anticipate these questions and so will realize that they must thoroughly address behavior change and motivation in their projects. Your company will then be rewarded with more complete and sustainable solutions than those realized in most Six Sigma implementations.
Another way sponsors can add meaningful value is to work with project teams to craft an explicit sequence of focused projects into an overall timeline. This will help reassure stakeholders that their interests are "on the radar screen," easing pressures teams might otherwise feel to expand current projects in misguided attempts to realize all desired outcomes at once. Similarly, you'll want to monitor your implementation to ensure that it includes an appropriate number of "replication projects" that leverage previous project solutions across your company.
As an executive sponsor of Six Sigma, you can help sustain the effective project practices that drive consistently superior solutions. When the time comes to recognize teams, applaud how they worked as well as what they accomplished. Note specific choices that made their projects time- and resource-efficient. Recognize teams for maintaining appropriate project scope. Finally, praise the completeness of their solutions--especially their efforts to identify and reinforce critical-path behaviors.
As an executive sponsor, you can also lead efforts to weave Six Sigma solutions deep into the fabric of your company's operations. This is essential for turning successful innovations into permanent operating procedures. Use your clout to push for appropriate and timely adjustments in performance metrics, incentive systems, compensation policy, and so on. Provide leaders and employees in affected processes with immediate and tangible reasons to adapt their behaviors as needed.
Your company should also formally set aside a percentage of the savings realized through Six Sigma successes to fund future projects. Participants will see this as a clear sign that you want them to continue their improvement efforts. A competently sponsored, well-funded Six Sigma implementation will pay for itself many times over.
Steve Jacobs, a consultant and senior partner with CLG, is an expert executive coach with a successful track record of results and culture change across a range of corporate situations. Clients trust him for providing quality leadership, coaching, mentoring, and insightful implementation strategies that lead to sustainable change.
Jim Hillgren holds a doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of Texas. He specializes in helping organizations increase competitive performance by providing executive coaching and education to senior leaders in the effective use of behavior-based leadership skills, and helping leaders to guide the development of human performance and reinforcement systems to focus behavior in the right direction.
Mark Zabel, president of Straight Line Performance Solutions LLC, has more than 20 years of experience in Six Sigma, statistics, analytical methods, software development, process analysis, and reengineering. Zabel is a certified Six Sigma Master Black Belt, and he has educated and mentored more than 250 Black Belts, 400 Green Belts, and 1,500 Yellow Belts and Champions.
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