The Six-Sigma Cycle Of Change

"Nothing endures but change." Heraclitus (fl. 500 BC).

If only it were that easy. Achieving a specific change, like becoming a Six Sigma company, will not just miraculously happen. It requires a purposeful process focused on results. Change, like other processes, consists of a series of steps; each of which take time and must be followed in order. Some time ago, I was asked what the real goal of implementing Six Sigma is and what the change process actually looks like. This remark from a Six Sigma Champion sums it up best.

I hear that Six Sigma is about culture change, but all we really seem to be doing is talking about Black Belts, Green Belts and their projects. What does that have to do with Culture Change?

Great question, but one not often addressed in popular literature. I began my answer instinctively by drawing a picture. The picture was a circle with three labeled points: (1) Change Behavior, (2) Experience Results, and (3) Change Culture.

Throughout my career and personal life, I have found that the most effective way to create sustainable change is by successfully creating positive experiences for those you want to influence to change. I concluded a while ago that the 1990s approach to culture change for the most part did not work. That was the era of vision statements, mission statements, and core values printed on the back of company ID cards.

Unfortunately, you cannot communicate culture change; you cannot buy culture change; you cannot mandate culture change. It is only through the reinforcement that comes from the constant repetition of positive experiences that will lead to lasting change. Likewise, for Six Sigma, it is the repeated positive impact of successful Black Belt and Green Belt projects that will drive and institutionalise a change in your company’s culture.

While you cannot change your culture overnight, you can start to drive results through Six Sigma projects. By repeatedly delivering results, everyone involved in the projects, supporting the projects, benefiting from the results, or those merely observing the results will all come to appreciate Six Sigma as a more disciplined problem solving methodology and data driven decision-making process. Through the experience of repeated success, the culture of your organization will begin to change. On multiple occasions, I have had senior business leaders say to me, we’re not ready for Six Sigma. We need to work on culture change for the next couple of years first. My reply is always is another question, what will you do to create that culture change? What experiences will you generate?

The model presented here describes the Six Sigma change cycle. At first glance, it appears to be an overly simple modeland it is. The model essentially says that to realise culture change, you need to have positive experiences -- and in Six Sigma, we create those experiences by delivering project results. The model then says that to experience results, you have to change some behaviors. Moreover, it says that once you experience culture change, it will reinforce the behavior change.

You will notice from the model that the Six Sigma change process is a closed cycle. With a closed cycle, the question always is, how do I enter the cycle?

Consider the three possible points of entry:

1. Experience Results: Results take time, effort, and investment. We obviously cannot start here.
2. Culture Change: Culture change takes time and the experience of repeated results. We cannot start here either. That only leaves . . .
3. Behavior Change: Can we simply agree one day to do things differently? Yes, we can, but it will not be easy. It takes a very deliberate, concerted effort to decide to do things differently. We cannot sustain a hard, conscious effort forever either. Eventually we will revert to our old habits, unless . . . our new behavior produces reasonably fast results, which in turn drives a culture change. This culture change will cause us to do things differently on a permanent basis.

We all know that change isn’t easy, so how can we create the series of repeated experiences that produce the culture change that drives the behavior and results that we want? We must first start with what we can control our own behavior.

There is one more dimension of the model that I want to elaborate upon . . . the wheel. Why not just a circle? The wheel represents the forces at work. A large wheel at rest is difficult to get rolling. You have to put in a lot of energy to overcome the inertia and resistance that is keeping the wheel at rest. However, once in motion, keeping the wheel rolling is easy, we just periodically have to add a little bit of energy. Now, picture yourself walking up to a big giant wheel and pushing on it very hard in an attempt to get it rolling. After a short period of pushing, imagine that the wheel has just moved a little, but is not actually spinning. What now? You are tired. Then, picture yourself taking a deep breath, walking up to the wheel, and trying one more time. Fail to get it turning this time and what do you feel? Answer: Exhausted. Moreover, you probably will not try a third time.

That is the Six Sigma cycle of change; it is very hard to get things rolling in the beginning, but once the wheel of change is in motion, it is easy to sustain. In other words, Six Sigma eventually provides its own energy and almost becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.