Leadership Influence, Support and Understanding of the LSS Deployment

In his opening address, with virtually his first words, the conference chairman Nico Alonzi stated that “…the biggest challenge of any deployment of Lean Six Sigma… is getting your organisation to have the necessary acceptance and buy-ins to allow the tools and techniques to deliver the benefits you are looking for.” This would prove to be arguably the most visited topic of the conference, and rightly so given the level of importance attributed to it by the chairman.

Time and again the point was made that the role of management needs to be clearly stated and defined. Iain Coucher, Deputy Chief Executive of Network Rail, emphasised his own support for his organisation’s business improvement programme in his presentation, Leading The Way For The Future of Lean Six Sigma. A statement was also displayed by the Network Rail chairman, Ian McAllister, clearly stating his commitment: “We have selected Six Sigma as our methodology of choice for improving our processes. It is a highly disciplined, structured technique and provides the deep, analytical rigour we need to make long-term, sustainable performance improvements.”

Having an official statement like this from the CEO is invaluable, particularly with the framework of DMAIC that has a relatively long life-cycle, and this commitment must be maintained. Tom Johnstone, CEO of SKF, in his keynote address said that he personally signs every Black Belt’s certificate upon successful completion of their training, and where possible tries to present it to them personally. This manages to both reinforce his commitment to the Six Sigma programme, and act as a useful morale boost to the individual. A full report on Mr Johnstone's keynote address can be found as an appendix to this section of the report.

The conference revealed many other ways of ensuring management commitment. Pankaj Aggarwal of Delphi Corporation devoted his whole presentation – Achieving Company-wide Buy-in and Passion for Lean Six Sigma - to the concept, and he gave some useful insights into both its importance, and how to get it done.

Delphi ensured the commitment of their executives to their own improvement programme by training them to Belt standard first, thus ensuring that they were able to effectively communicate the message to the workforce because they could better see its value.

Mr Aggarwal appropriated Einstein’s Theory of Relatively (as shown below) and related it to the importance of management buy-in.

If E = The Energy of the project, M = Management Commitment, and C = Value Contribution, then if M or C is zero, Mr Aggarwal postulated, then E must also equal zero, and if the project has no energy then it will fail.

Accordingly, this also means that, if things aren’t going well, Black Belts must look at the value contribution of the project before they blame lack of management commitment. It is vital that the value contribution is communicated efficiently and effectively to management, and the best way to do this, in Mr Aggarwal's opinion, is to use their own metrics from the very start, communicating the value in their own language.

Jean-Pierre Scarlakens, of Sauer-Danfoss Europe also made this point in his presentation, Spreading into Sales & Marketing: Conquering the tough-to-engage workforce, when he called for the need for one language within an organisation. Luc Vander Beken, Senior Engagement Leader at BMG, took it further by stating that the proper implementation of LSS demands that results must be clearly measured and communicated in the chosen language of the management. In his presentation on Deploying Results Driven Performance Excellence he claimed that “…the reason TQM failed” was because it did not effectively communicate the results versus the investment to management.

This communication of results ties in with another theme of the conference, the speeding up of process time to delivery, because if value can be shown quickly, then this reduces the possibility of management apathy.

It is indisputable that Leadership Influence, Support and Understanding is one of the key governing factors in a successful deployment of any business improvement methodology. It is vital that this is not only sought, but clearly defined and consistently maintained.