Many companies want to go Six Sigma but are not sure about how to go about it. It’s that one initial step that can make or break your journey. I’ve learned about this from the Six Sigma and Lean seminars that I attended.
The common question is how do we choose the projects? How do we begin the deployment? Simple questions whose answers are not always the basic or easy solutions.
Bill Kastle and Max Isaac share with iSixSigma Financial Services how interviews can help in a Six Sigma deployment, specifically what questions to ask. The questions would touch the following areas:
- 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”?
Like any other endeavor, knowing what is it that you need or need to do is always a good way to start.
