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How to influence people with Lean Six Sigma?

How Customers demand improvement and people within organizations deliver that improvement through Lean Six Sigma.

Influencing people or organizations through the use of Lean Six Sigma employs different tools and techniques depending upon the organization, it's continuous improvement maturity, and it's appetite for change.

We'll explore different ways of using some of the key techniques in the Lean Six Sigma Toolkit to both communicate the need for change and demonstrate change within an organization, through an evidence based approach that makes it impossible to argue against the benefits of Lean Six Sigma.

We shall explore the impact that this methodology and philosophy can have on an organisations culture, people, customer's and ultimately profitability.

Many organizations have, at some time in their history, attempted initiatives to improve quality, increase productivity and reduce cost. Unfortunately, in many cases, quality, productivity and cost reduction are tackled as separate improvement initiatives, the result being a disjointed approach to improvement which is departmentally focused and doesn't look at the organization as an overall "System", delivering an output to the customer.

Lean Six Sigma is probably the best tool around for delivering benefits in terms of quality, productivity and cost. However, it's success as a methodology is embedded in its interaction with 2 critical sets of stakeholders - the Customer and the organisation's People.

Lean Six Sigma's ability to engage people across all levels and all disciplines within an organization is based upon the involvement of both Customers and People in identifying issues requiring improvement and in developing solutions which should, in all cases, lead to an improvement for the customer.

The influential element of Lean Six Sigma is through the use of data from within an organization, whether this is customer information about performance, or internal indicators relating to Quality, Cost, Delivery and Productivity.

Many organisations who have a mature system for gathering performance data find that the information they collect doesn't inform them about the performance of the process. Instead, the focus will more often than not be focused on customer lagging indicators (measures of outputs) which tell the organization how poor they are at delivering against their customer's requirements.

Lean Six Sigma is very much focused upon the customer and the use of process performance data (Leading Indicators) to understand the variability within a process. When we understand the Variability within a process we have some measure of it's Predictability.

Customers want stability; they want to know that the service they receive next time is going to be at least as good, if not better, than the service they received last time. Therefore, through gathering of the Voice of The Customer we can marry up the requirements of the customer to the quality of our processes and the resulting quality of the outputs of our processes.

If the focus for the business is to satisfy or delight the customer, then Lean Six Sigma is the perfect methodology to link Customers, People and Processes through the use of Project Teams.

When engaging people around the business on improvement initiatives it's more important to tell them "WHY" you are doing something before telling them what you are doing. The "WHY" could be a need to reduce cost, something all businesses are looking to do in the current climate, improve quality which may result in winning new business or orders, or increase productivity due to increased demand.

People within an organization are far more likely to volunteer for involvement in Lean Six Sigma project teams if an organization is willing to fulfill some of the basic requirements of it's people

They want their voice to be heard
They want to take responsibility for the solutions they develop
They want to be able to see things through to the end and see their ideas put into practice
They want to do the right thing and not waste time and effort on solutions that won't deliver benefits.

All of the above can be fulfilled through effective project leadership, support from senior managers through project sponsorship and trust from the management team that people within the organization are best placed to improve the processes they work within on a daily basis.

Lean Six Sigma is very much an evidence based system and people are influenced positively when there is real evidence that the time, effort and energy they have put into a project has resulted in real, tangible benefits to the organization.

Lean Six Sigma uses data to measure the current or "As-Is" performance of the process or processes under analysis (the Baseline Performance).

Once a solution has been developed, a "To Be" process can be tested and it's performance measured. A comparison can then be made between the "As-Is" and the "To Be" processes to identify the level of benefit achieved.

It is this systematic application of process measurement which has the biggest influence on people within an organization. Their natural position when a methodology like Lean Six Sigma is employed within an organization is to be skeptical about the ability of Lean Six Sigma to deliver real benefits to an organisation.

It is when these benefits are measured and are tangible benefits that demonstrate that something has "Changed" and has delivered real improvement that Lean Six Sigma gains credibility within an organisation.

It is then this credibility that ensures that the momentum of improvement is delivered through the people, who are now looking to get involved in projects to improve their own processes.

Lean Six Sigma isn't just about processes, it's more about the delivery of real value to an organisation's customers and the culture of people involvement that sets Lean Six Sigma organizations apart from others.

Companies using Lean Six Sigma to deliver improvements find that the solutions developed are more sustainable, as the people who developed the solutions are the people who work in the process on a daily basis and as a result, have a vested interest in seeing the solutions become a success.

If you are a Senior Manager within an organisation and are looking for a way to significantly improve the performance of your business then look no further than Lean Six Sigma. It has no functional boundaries, a process is a process wherever you work and all processes have Variability.

If you want those significant improvements to be long term then Lean Six Sigma, with it's use of the organisation's people to develop solutions, will ensure that solutions stay implemented within the process.

If you are interested in learning more about Lean Six Sigma and how it can have a huge impact on your organisation, then please contact SigmaPro who will be glad to offer advise, support and training to deliver Lean Six Sigma training within your organisation.

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Author Biography

Company Director and Six Sigma Master Black Belt

Paul has over 20 years of experience within quality management and Continuous improvement. The majority of his career was spent within the automotive industry, working with companies such as Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Ford and Volkswagen, using methodologies and tools within Six Sigma to improve quality, delivery and service for customers while reducing costs and improving internal performance for the organizations he worked for. After the automotive sector Paul spent time within the Financial Services, FMCG and Food Industries applying Continuous Improvement techniques to improve performance. His most recent work has been with the Ministry of Defence and the Forensic Science Service.

He was trained as a Six Sigma Black Belt by Caterpillar and attained his Master Black Belt Status via SigmaPro's Six Sigma Master Black Belt training course.

He is an associate consultant with SigmPro, delivering Six Sigma Training and support to their clients.

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