There’s Always a Better Way

Six Sigma works, and of that there’s no doubt. How do I know? I know because thousands, perhaps millions, of people say it’s so. But still, that doesn’t mean Six Sigma is perfect, and any student of Six Sigma knows that there’s really nothing new about its process and tools.

It’s not Six Sigma that’s new, but the way we put it together – lead it, communicate it, manage it – that can be new. Back in the days of TQM, we didn’t have deployment models for truly engaging the executive team. Sure, some did, but that wasn’t the norm like it is today. We didn’t have full-time TQM practitioners either, like we have full-time Black Belts now.

But no matter how far we’ve come, and how well we’ve gotten out of firefighting mode with Six Sigma’s proactive approach, there’s ALWAYS a better way, and finding it is just a question of having an open mind.

Nevertheless, many Six Sigma deployment leaders, Black Belts and Green Belts alike tell me one of their biggest challenges is getting executives to accept that there might actually be a better way. But have the Six Sigma leaders in most organizations forgotten the lesson themselves? They’re so sure Six Sigma is a better way that they often fail to question whether Six Sigma itself can be improved.

With Six Sigma, there are a number of challenges that companies have faced since the very early days at Motorola, AlliedSignal and GE. For example, the expectation that every Green Belt work two projects a year is very common. It’s been an expectation handed down from consultant to consultant, deployment leader to deployment leader, year after year.

Yet it’s the exceptionally rare company in which Green Belts consistently work two projects a year. Don’t get me wrong, some do. But many only get to one, and some don’t do any more after their initial training. Why? Because for Green Belts, we haven’t shifted the paradigm like we have with Black Belts. They still have jobs to do. They’re still firefighters.

Similarly, I’ve never been involved in a Six Sigma deployment in which the Champions weren’t viewed as the weak links. They’re less trained, they’re busy and they’ve been taught to delegate. All this means that they don’t provide good support to Black Belts, which results in poorly selected projects, vaguely specified objectives and compromised results.

Yet consultant after consultant, deployment leader after deployment leader, continues down the same path, expecting more from Champions than they can give. Why?  Because we haven’t changed the paradigm for Champions either, and this means they’re not only fire fighters but fire chiefs as well.

It’s 2005, two decades since Motorola first started down the path of Six Sigma and more than a decade since AlliedSignal first gave us the model of Six Sigma we know today. It’s time to say, “perhaps there’s a better way.” Now that doesn’t mean we have to throw out Six Sigma. It simply means we have to have an open mind and we have to look for new and innovative approaches for implementing Six Sigma.

In future columns I will discuss what some of these better ways are. In the meantime, I invite you to share yours struggles and suggestions. Tell me how we can make Six Sigma better for everyone. You can reach me at DavidS@BMGi.com.