Beyond projects: why Lean Six Sigma practitioners need to look at the bigger picture

Whilst projects are the bread and butter of any Lean Six Sigma belt, they could prove pointless if the programme is poorly managed. This may sound obvious, but rarely do Black Belt and Master Black Belt training materials take more than a passing interest in it. It will include lots of material on statistics and tools but not, for instance, how to successfully guide your leaders into making the right decisions for your deployment programme.

Seminars and interviews with the experts make frequent reference to how gaining buy-in from leaders - as well as throughout the organisation - is critical to the success of a Lean Six Sigma implementation. It is the Black Belts and Master Black Belts who need to ensure that they do all they can to get it – but most are ill-equipped to do so.

It's a problem that Andy Liddle, associate partner at Catalyst Consulting, recognised during his time as Global Lean Six Sigma Champion at Dupont Teijin Films in the late 1990's. "Ours was a global business with three regions,” he explains. “We were using similar technologies, the same training materials, and we all started from the same place. But there was large variability in the benefits delivered from one region to another. How could one region deliver twice as much as another when the set-ups were ostensibly the same? I wanted to understand the reasons so we could maximize our programme delivery.”

Critical X's

Andy began looking into the separate regions, and after a series of best practice comparisons, tried to identify the critical X's of the deployments. In addition he noticed differences in the attitudes of the Belts to the deployment as a whole.

"A lot of belts think they just have to do projects," remarks Andy. "But they need to engage with the broader deployment. We therefore provided a framework for Black Belts and Master Black Belts to think about deployment which we supported with a set of training materials which were built around the critical deployment Xs. This enabled them to play their part and work with their peers to try and nudge them towards better project selection, better support, better able to influence their leadership, and so on."

Consequently, Andy has taken the lessons learned at DuPont into his work with Catalyst, who run a 'Deployment Masterclass'. Aimed at Deployment Champions, Master Black Belts and Black Belts who aspire to become Master Black Belts, the course provides different techniques, processes and approaches to help guide the deployment as a whole. According to Andy and Catalyst, this relies on getting three things right.

"First of all, you have to make sure that you're doing the 'right work'; working on the right projects and that they are aligned with each other and with your strategy. Secondly, you've got to make sure that you 'work right'; do the work in a professional way, with qualified belts, who have time to do their work, with full sponsor support.

"The third area is 'creating the environment' where this can thrive. That's primarily focused around leadership and communications. Underneath those three main headings there are sub factors and we assess all of these to provide a rounded view of a deployment."

All-round vision

By involving Belts in the assessment process and exposing them to best practice the Belts themselves can identify the areas in which they can contribute.

This lack of an all-round vision is not necessarily the fault of the Belts themselves. "I honestly don't think its because they don’t want to," says Andy. "I think its because they don’t know what to do. Unless you open their eyes to it and show them the best practice and give them the framework, its hard for them. Our Masterclass does that. "

Choosing the wrong projects, or not finding the ones that really align with the business strategy, will seriously undermine the success of a deployment. It is really important to flush out projects in a structured way and ensure alignment and support. The course covers a range of different techniques, processes and approaches for identifying projects.

Leadership behaviours ( or lack of the right ones!), will inevitably culminate in the failure of the programme. Many belts sit back and wait for their leaders to suddenly behave differently! Usually a very ling wait! It is important for the Belts to recognise that they often need to guide their leaders in the right direction, says Andy. "I've seen people put enormous energy into a fancy project selection process, or invest in loads of programme tracking IT, etc, when actually they would have been far better off taking their leader off to a different company and showing him a bit of best practice there."

"It doesn't go into statistical tools per se, but quite often 'vanilla' Six Sigma training materials fail to hit the spot. Sales and Marketing, for instance, may say that they don't need Six Sigma when in fact there are areas where it could be of great value. I’ve yet to find anyone from marketing whose heart lifted at the prospect of a module on logistic regression. So the trick is to tailor materials to suit particular needs. They have to be relevant to have any chance of penetrating an organisation. The course covers a range of ways in which materials can be adapted to best effect.

'Deployment healthcheck'

Practically, of course, the areas that need the most attention will vary greatly from organisation to organisation.

Consequently, Andy and Catalyst tailor the course to the specific requirements of the individuals, who are asked to complete a 'Deployment Healthcheck' before they attend the Masterclass. This assesses the organisation and benchmarks against over 70 other companies. "We do quite a lot of them in-house for companies, but we also do the Open Deployment Masterclass and many companies don't mind non-competitive disclosure and get real value from talking to people from companies and industries, sharing best practices and picking their brains."

"At the end of every session, attendees know where they are, they get examples of best practice, and they can decide what they like the look of, what they need to do. There's a learning log that parallels the sessions and helps them to prioritise the areas that are important to them and what are the important things they should do when they go back to their deployment."

Ultimately, it is in everyone's interest for the improvement programme to be deployed as well as it possibly can be, and for this to happen everyone involved must look beyond their own work and projects.

"It's not in the books, this," Andy points out. "They have all the stats and tools etc, but not how to manage a deployment. [Practitioners] need a 360 degree view of how their deployment is going."

The Catalyst Deployment Masterclass is run regularly jointly by Andy Liddle and Andy Ruddick and the next one takes place between the 30th September and 1st October in Stratford-upon-Avon. For more details: http://www.onesixsigma.com/catalystconsulting/Lean-Six-Sigma-Black-Belt-Module-S2-Statistical-Tools-1-23092008