During the Best of Six Sigma Practices seminar, I envied the three companies that shared their Six Sigma journey. It was quite obvious that they had addressed the success factors to begin with. What are these? They had the leadership, they had management support, they had people to train for Six Sigma and go into Six Sigma projects, and they had allocated a portion of their budget to do it.
How could they go wrong? From the open forum discussion, I learned that to sustain the enthusiasm and ensure the Control phase of the DMAIC, there must the right motivation and the timely communication. Reports are made accessible by everyone in the organization, and I’m guessing these reports are in the language that everyone can easily understand.
So, for today’s Six Sigma reference feature, I’m sharing with you a very useful article on “Six Sigma Communications: The Missing Link in Your Six Sigma Strategy?”
Written by Doug Gorman for Information Mapping, the article discusses how Six Sigma projects gone pffft because of miscommunication. I like this part:
Adding Six Sigma to the Communication Mix
Six Sigma initiatives will require you to significantly increase the quality and quantity of communication within your organization. But let’s face it, most organizations are already struggling with communications that are unfocused and difficult to read, with buried key points in endless lines of irrelevant information. The number of poorly written e-mail messages, reports, and proposals that come across their desks each day already overburdens managers. And workers already have difficulty interpreting all of the complicated policies, processes and procedures they are supposed to follow. Adding Six Sigma ideas, reports, proposals, solutions, project updates, and process changes to the mix will only add to the problem–unless they are presented in a clear, effective way that highlights key points and allows readers to quickly access and understand the information they need.
Adopting organization-wide communication standards, methods, and protocols, and adding communication skills training to the Six Sigma curriculum will help Six Sigma teams communicate and sell their ideas, plans, and solutions internally, will make life easier for overburdened managers, and will substantially increase a project’s likelihood of success.
Source:
Information Mapping, “Six Sigma Communications: The Missing Link in Your Six Sigma Strategy?”
