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There has been a lot of ink spilled lately dithering about Six Sigma and Innovation. Most of it by naysayers who feel that Six Sigma is antithetical to Innovation, or zealots who feel some version of the opposite sentiment. For the life of me, I can’t wrap my mind around either position.

To illustrate my view, let’s talk about some other processes you find in most organizations – perhaps budgeting and talent development. Most businesses have at least an annual budgeting process and an annual talent development process. These are fundamental, and exist in most places out of necessity. Clearly the two have links: it takes money to develop and retain talent, and it takes high caliber people to manage all aspects of cashflow and propel the organization forward. Without good talent development there would eventually be no budget to allocate, and without good budgeting all the talent in the world isn’t going to matter after a couple of quarters.

So talent development and budgeting are both necessary for the success of the organization, but neither is sufficient. Hardly an interesting observation, right? Now suppose someone told you that “your budget process is killing your talent development process.” Well, it could be true, and if so you’d have to fix it. But suppose they went on to say that “talent development is much more important, so you should get rid of the budget process.” That’s ridiculous, right? The very idea makes no sense.

But that’s exactly the argument that is made regarding Six Sigma and Innovation. If I had a nickel for every article I’ve read concluding that Six Sigma kills Innovation so we should jettison Six Sigma, well, I’d probably have about a dollar. But you get my point.

There are two things wrong with this conclusion, regardless of how it is reached. The first one is described above. Six Sigma and Innovation are two separate but related processes that must co-exist in a healthy organization. Both are necessary and neither is sufficient for success. Suggesting that one should be pursued to the exclusion of the other is infantile thinking. I don’t care what you call the attendant programs, but new ideas need to be encouraged and developed, and continuous improvement needs to occur. Of course, Six Sigma can’t be the Innovation program either. Organizations that lack an Innovation program and try to make Six Sigma stand in for it are bound to be disappointed. If you have no talent development process, having a great budget process isn’t going to help.

So the first thing wrong with the conclusion that Six Sigma kills Innovation is that it suggests an opposition between the two processes, falsely implying a choice that isn’t there. You don’t get to choose one or the other. Both are necessary. The trick is to make them work together, just like budgeting and talent acquisition.

The second thing wrong with the conclusion is that, properly structured, Six Sigma and Innovation have an intrinsically synergistic relationship, not an antagonistic one. Just like budgeting and talent development do when properly executed. Despite what you may have read, process and structure are not natural enemies of Innovation. Bad process and inappropriate structure…maybe those are enemies of Innovation, but then they are the enemy of many other things in the organization too. A bad Innovation program will certainly be a drag on your Continuous Improvement program, and vice versa. But as I have pointed out many times before, the conclusion that poorly run programs perform poorly is not useful or interesting.

It has been my experience that well-run Six Sigma programs generate a tidal wave of new insights and ideas. Indeed, managing the flow of those ideas becomes a central, consuming, happy problem for successful programs. This is true even when a very structured approach is taken. I’m reminded of a story I was once told about an author who decided to write an entire novel without using the letter “e”. You’d think this would be incredibly limiting, but in fact the author ended up learning many, many new words and taking his writing in entirely new directions. The structure forced him to break old habits and think in new ways.

A recent New York Times article by Janet Rae-Dupree makes this point in fascinating depth. Here’s a tease:

“So it seems antithetical to talk about habits in the same context as creativity and innovation. But brain researchers have discovered that when we consciously develop new habits, we create parallel synaptic paths, and even entirely new brain cells, that can jump our trains of thought onto new, innovative tracks.”

Far from killing it, a well-deployed Six Sigma program (or any structured approach to continuous improvement) can be a great partner to Innovation. The reverse point is also true, that Innovation can help Six Sigma. I’m not going to construct an argument to support my belief that Innovation is a necessary component of Continuous Improvement, as I take it to be true almost by definition.

I recently got a text message from my son. "Mom . . . Pick me up ATEOTD." Unable to decipher the text message abbreviation I’m forced to do what any mom what do . . text back . . . What? "At The End Of The Day" comes the reply with a big UGH! It’s like a foreign language. I’m sure the kids are doing it to drive me mad. But then, maybe it’s just their new language.

I started thinking about how the whole text abbreviation thing is sort of like what Six Sigma must sound like to those who have not had the chance to participate in training. "After identifying the CTs and completing a SIPOC, you should start on your FMEA". I can see how that might sound like gobble-de-gook to an untrained ear.

When we use Six Sigma tools and methods on a daily basis, it’s easy to get so wrapped up in our own world that we forget that everyone may not be as proficient in the new vocabulary as we are. I’m trying to keep this in mind when I address a group of people who are new to Six Sigma and have started saying "high level process map" instead of SIPOC and "risk analysis" instead of FMEA. I think people appreciate the effort. Over time, the Six Sigma jargon will become second nature. Until then, you will probably hear them say "Six Sigma. . . IAGTM."

Last Thursday, May 1st, was iSixSigma’s very first live event from our new division, iSixSigma Live! It was a Social & Networking Party held in Seattle, Washington -- and it was phenomenal!

Over 130 Seattle Six Sigma and quality professionals converged on Rock Bottom Brewery in Bellevue. We rented out the entire top floor of the brewery ("top of the rock") and had a great time. Upon entering, attendees received their name tags and a networking activity which guaranteed they met tens of new people during the event.

The Party featured interesting people, fantastic conversations, an open bar, a lavish appetizer buffet, billiards, music, and a raffle (autographed books, iSixSigma garb, and an iPod Video graciously donated by Instantis). No one left disappointed -- even if they didn’t win a door prize, everyone walked away with an iSixSigma Live! goodie bag full of sponsor offers, tschochkes, coupons and discounts.

The emails are still pouring in:

"There were so many people there I found I had a great opportunity to reach out and make new contacts as well as catch up with former acquaintances." -- David, Philips Medical Systems

"I was looking for Movers and Shakers in the local 6 Sigma community, Michael Cyger and iSixSigma provided the place, and the FUN just started from there." -- Greg, Harnish Group

"I was pleasantly surprised to see that attendance was much higher than I expected. The event was well organized and it provided exactly what advertised. A chance to meet other six sigma professionals in a social event. Good job. I’ll definitely will be attending future iSixSigma events." -- Gerry, Calypso Medical Technologies

"It was really easy to meet people. Everybody had a lot in common, including a passion for organizational excellence through Lean Six Sigma. All you had to ask was "where do you work and what projects are you working on?" This would result in 20+ minutes of great conversation that included valuable knowledge and lessons learned. I would like the next mixer sooner than Sept/Oct." -- Larry, FAA

"This is a great opportunity to meet fellow process improvement professionals, learn about industry happenings and even connect on job opportunities. Plus it is just a lot of fun." -- Michael, The Natural Intelligence Group

"I can’t wait for the next event. When will it be? Not soon enough!"

"Thank you so much for arranging such a fun and meaningful event. I cannot wait for the next opportunity."

"I really enjoyed the party last night. How often do you have them in Seattle? Thanks!"

"Nicely done and thanks for getting us all together."

I can’t wait for the next Social & Networking Party! Thanks to everyone in the local area who came out, and thanks to all our wonderful sponsors for taking part in this fantastic event.

View the full photo gallery here: http://photos.isixsigma.com/gallery/4829650_qzHYF

The Cox-Box is Copyright © 2000-2008 iSixSigma LLC and Gary P. Cox – All Rights Reserved
Reproduction Without Permission Is Prohibited – Request Permission

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The state of the US economy notwithstanding, retention of talent is a major issue across many organizations these days. Operational Excellence, Six Sigma, and related disciplines are no exception, with a lot of the mobility fueled by the same high standards for training and certification that are intended to attract folks in the first place.

Indeed, that sucking sound you hear just might be the vacuum created as Black Belts bolt one manufacturing company for another. Or perhaps they’re leaving for jobs in healthcare and finance, both of which seem to be consuming experienced practitioners at an alarming rate. And if you are in China or other similarly hot economies, that sucking sound is probably closer to the wail of a hurricane, as the best talent ricochets from employer to employer with all the subtlety of a midnight freight train.

For the organization suffering defections, there are many downsides to this churn. Consistency is hard to maintain. Standards are hard to enforce. Long-term projects and initiatives are hard to complete. Relationships suffer. Departments break down. And organization memory shrinks to a pinprick.

Priority number one in this environment is, of course, to hold on to your talent. I won’t go into that lengthy topic (others could probably do it more justice anyway), nor will I tarry for an admittedly interesting discussion about why a lot of technical folks feel the need to hop employers to get ahead in their careers (although I do think that is a fascinating phenomenon).

Instead I want to talk about the flip-side of the phenomenon, and why it can actually be a good thing for an organization. Even the best organizations lose people sometimes, and those people are generally replaced with people from other good organizations. So there is a constant stream of people and knowledge going back and forth. All of which means that, big or small, you probably have a lot of “outside” knowledge resident in your organization. This is old news, and I’m hardly the first one to point it out. But I think its especially true of continuous improvement professionals, and in my experience there isn’t a whole lot being done about it.

This is in part due to a love affair with outside consultants. Many of us were initially trained by outside consultants, and out first instinct in new situations is to look towards them. This is a familiar mode for all involved, but is very expensive and results tend to be mixed at best. What if there was a way to get exactly the same benefits with virtually no cost and very little risk? With as much cross-fertilization as there is going on between companies these days, the best consultants are probably already colleagues just waiting to be consulted. That’s always been the case, but it is exacerbated as the flow of talent is becomes ever more fast, furious, and global.

Like I said, this is hardly an original thought. But even so, I see a lot of consultants engaged for jobs that could very well be done just as well by internal employees. The missing link is a high degree of communication and organization, especially across geography and business functions. For example, if a large company needs 5S help in a plant in Chicago, it is very easy to go out and hire a consultant. But if the company is large enough, there’s probably a distribution center in Warsaw that has already been through a 5S journey and has plenty of expertise and experience to share. The trouble is that the folks in Chicago almost never know about the people in Warsaw. And even if that connection is made, doing something about can look pretty daunting. Getting the domestic consultant in is a lot easier. It may cost more, but it is the kind of cost that the organization is used to paying.

All of which means that in an environment where talent and experience are migrating both in and out of the organization – like they are right now in Six Sigma and related areas – having the infrastructure and processes in place to identify and leverage expertise globally is at least as important as any other task a deployment executive has. You’ve got people coming in with new skills and experience all the time, and you need to be learning from them and leveraging what they know. You can be victim to the sucking sound, or you can profit from it. Setting up to do that looks and feel a lot different than a traditional deployment, but we’re no longer living in a world where big companies don’t have Black Belts or Continuous Improvement specialists. The question isn’t whether you have them, it’s what you know about them and what are you doing with them.

My Lean Thinking colleagues in Maine State Government have also been looking for quotes in Henry Fords writing that would speak to our movement toward more efficient and productive work as individuals, companies and communities. The one that was chosen for their monthly news letter speaks to the people side of lean. It speaks of the major cause of resistance and poor function in human beings participating in the transformational change that lean process analysis can bring. When I read this month news letter there it was staring at me.

“ I pity the poor fellow who is so soft and flabby that he must always have "an atmosphere of good feeling" around him before he can do his work. There are such men. And in the end, unless they obtain enough mental and moral hardiness to lift them out of their soft reliance on "feeling," they are failures”. ^[i]

Whew. Sounds a little strong for todays human resource function. But when you can get past the fatherly toughness you can see that Henry is absolutely right. Like most self respecting professional continuous improvement professionals, before I looked at all the “other” flabby people in my work environment (clients and professional colleagues) I took a glance at myself. Don’t get me wrong, I am not into self destruction, but I was raised with the belief that you should look for the log in your own eye before seeking the splinter in another’s eye. How flabby am I either physically or emotionally? Honest self assessment? That is a very difficult thing for many of us to do. We get very good at measuring process, cycle time, machine tool tolerances and others performance. But how good are we at looking at self? I have discovered when I am able to self assess my own production flaws I am much more able to objectively review others.

So I when I worked out last night I worked extra hard and vowed to move towards strength and away from flabby. Strengthing body and mind through exercise and related activities is one strategy to improve this function.

Another strategy is to examine the response we have when our feelings arise as we are trying to compete our daily tasks. There is a great list of short sayings called Constructive Living Maxims ^[ii] which can help each of us get past our feeling and back to what needs being done. Keep these handy when you start to feel like not working, they may be the thought that puts you back on task.

A third strategy for overcoming the power of feelings is good planning. If you do not have a map or plan, feelings can easily become the driving source of decisions. Then you are in big trouble. When you do not have a plan, you are planning to fail. What planning tool to you use? There are some six sigma planning tools that can be used. I know of another. I recently began working with some old process friends who have developed a planning tool for students and communities. We used it almost 10 years ago when I chaired our community’s comprehensive plan committee. The tool is called Running Start . I am working with them to adapt this tool for disabled adults participating in the voc rehab process and returning veterans who are integrating back into the community. This personal planning process facilitates the development of a plan, gives quantitative feedback regarding the progress being made and keeps you on track so feelings do not dominate decisions and you work the plan which has been developed. It might be a good process to use to reach the decision that you need a Value Stream Map to identify your prime contraint or waste and other process innefficiencies, although the tool alone will help identify those things as well.

How does all this relate to Six Sigma? Seems flabby is much like muda and causes significant reduction in our physical and emotional efficiency. How big is your log? Mine is shrinking, I hope.

Bye the way, Michael thanks for the new BB LSS certification process you mentioned in your recent column on April 4, 2008. I now have a certificate on my wall too! Just like the strawman in the Wizard of Oz. How transformational!

For those of you that joined us for the Six Sigma Salary Webcast in March you saw the software we used to analyze the data. The application was made available for free download so you could test-drive running analysis on your own.

I’m happy to announce that the sample iSixSigma salary data is now available for your slicing and dicing pleasure in the Spotfire Web Player, a free web based application that lets you play with the data without downloading the software.

iSixSigma Salary Data in Spotfire Web Player

Not only can you view the iSixSigma Salary data, but Spotfire has built a host of other entertaining applications as well. From Sports to politics, you can find one to suit you.

As an end note, if you missed the webcast live, it is still available to watch online. You can also still download the trial of Spotfire with the Salary Data included.

Yesterday, I attended a Minitab Webinar showcasing the top 8 reasons Six Sigma projects fail. Presented by Lou Johnson & Cate Twohill. Lou took care of the project failure segment (which was the vast majority) and Cate talked a bit about Minitab’s Quality Companion.

First off they did a fantastic job. Lou’s history and experience with Six Sigma and statistics coupled with his passion for getting to the bottom of project failure…resulted in this fine presentation.

The data was based off a survey of nearly 150 of Minitab’s customers at nearly 100 different companies. And yes there were more than eight reasons for failure cited by respondents. There were actually 42 reasons, but the top eight represented 62 percent of the total.

Lou laid out the eight reasons with detailed explanations and examples for each reason. I won’t go in to any detail besides listing them as Lou is sure to give this presentation again and again…

The Top Eight Reasons Six Sigma Projects Fail...

# 8 - The project solution was not implemented
# 7 - Project scope too big
# 6 - Not enough training
# 5 - Project too small for DMAIC rigor
# 4 - Project forced into DMAIC
# 3 - Project had no data or bad data
# 2 - Project not linked to Finances

and the #1 reason Six Sigma projects fail...
No management support

The biggest takeaway was, as Lou described it, “Rule #1: Pick the right project.” Four of the top eight reasons can be attributed to project selection (now comes my favorite part of the presentation, the iSixSigma research quote):

“While only 32% of respondents in organizations with new (less than one year) Six Sigma programs frequently or always use a formal prioritization process, 63% percent of those in organizations with five to ten years experience with Six Sigma do.” iSixSigma Magazine, March/April 2005

Throughout the presentation Lou offered a simple solution to each of the failure modes, and in most cases the solution could be found utilizing one of the features of Minitab’s Quality Companion.

Thank you Minitab for sharing these findings. Below are some additional articles from iSixSigma about project failure. As you read them you will find that they support Minitab’s findings as well as offer a few other failure modes to consider.

Tips and Suggestions for Six Sigma Project Success by Simon Bodie

Why Projects Fail by Holly Hawkins

How to Face Failed 6 Sigma Projects iSixSigma Discussion Forum

Understanding Six Sigma Deployment Failures by Mike Carnell

Project Selection Research by Jonathan Atwood, iSixSigma Magazine, March/April 2005

iSixSigma Magazine’s latest research survey is live! This survey will explore aspects of getting buy-in at all levels in the organization, from the shop floor to the senior executives.

With your input we’ll be able to better understand what buy-in means to companies and how different levels of Six Sigma buy-in affect deployments. The results of this survey will be published in the September issue of iSixSigma Magazine.

Please take a few minutes to tell us what Six Sigma buy-in means to you and your company and please pass the word to the naysayers in your company (if any), we need to hear from them too! Thanks.