Bill Kastle, vice president at George Group and consultant on Lean Six Sigma initiatives at major corporations, and Max Isaac, consultant and leadership expert in organizational behavior, shared their insights on how to make your Six Sigma deployments successful.
According to them, interviewing the CEO and the others who play a major role in the Six Sigma initiative itself is the key. These interviews can uncover factors that are critical in shaping an effective deployment strategy. The interviews can also help integrate Six Sigma into the company culture and environment.
The topics covered in such interviews typically include:
* Experiences with change initiatives from the past. Are they still in place? Why or why not? Have they made people enthusiastic or cynical?
* Understanding of corporate strategy and priorities:
– Key competitive selling points of the organization and its products/services.
– Key barriers that may hinder or derail deployment of strategy. A big one might be whether organization leaders think they can afford to dedicate a percentage of the workforce as full-time Black Belts.
* Current attitude towards Lean Six Sigma. Do they see it as a means for accomplishing their goals? As a necessary evil?
* How decisions are made and how conflict is resolved. Styles of decision-making, commitment to a team decision once made, support for divergent views, the level at which decision-making occurs.
* What people consider key to their personal success within the organization. How are strategic planning and individual goals are aligned in performance evaluations?
* How work gets done — collaboration vs. silos.
* The organization’s and key individuals’ understanding of and experience with any element of Lean Six Sigma (processes, data collection, cycle-time reduction, best practice sharing, etc.).
* Training history. What training has the company provided in the past? What skills have been emphasized? How well has it worked?
* Union issues. To what extent will unions be a factor in the Lean Six Sigma implementation?
* How strategies, goals, success measurements, and targets are cascaded throughout the organization. What structures and processes exist that determine improvement priorities? How is progress monitored and who participates in the processes?
* Teamwork/collaboration. Is it there or is it lacking within the organization? Are there turf wars?
* Openness to new approaches. How prevalent is the “not invented here syndrome”?
After you have obtained this information, you must know how to incorporate this into your Six Sigma initiative. The same information also can shape a communication strategy for Lean Six Sigma, which will explain the what, why and “what’s in it for me” to everyone in the organization.
Using Interviews to Shape a Six Sigma Deployment
