Notes from the Deployment Front

There are just three things leaders need to get right.

First is to act like leaders. That is to say when you are involved in this be clear about your commitment. Any leader that talks about this and then talks about more important priorities is not a leader. People hear actions clearer than they hear words.

Second is to align projects with disruptions in the key processes that are aligned with strategy. Simple – look to Policy Deployment for guidance.

Third is measure the right things, but first get your measures right. This is different than MSA and GR&R. Other than financials, you want to measure quality, time, and cost of each key process. I will talk measures of time for the next several posts, because I believe that fixing responsiveness also, by necessity, improves quality and cost.

Supplier Responsiveness –

I believe that any enterprise that depends on supplied resource (goods or services) would agree that the ability of those outsiders to give us what we want; when we need it is critical.

Most companies have two measures – on time to request and on time to agreement. I think on time to request, assuming lead times are defined and respected in the request, is the only important metric. I’ll argue that another day. Regardless of which you drive to or if you drive to both, it’s what is behind the numbers that makes all the difference. We can choose to measure to make people feel good about a bad system or we can put a straight system with simple rules in place that will initially give us ugly numbers. It’s our choice and it really goes to leadership – are they really committed and improving or complying with some initiative brought in by the CFO that just joined you from GE?

A simple example –

Say you work for a multinational company (they usually call themselves global but still make all decisions from HQ) and you have been chasing less expensive labor and materials to Latin America and Asia for the last five years. Odds are that the old purchasing metric of recvar looks great but you now have long lead times. Odds are that your forecast horizon is inside of lead time. Your purchasing and planning has turned out to be the expediting department. Your factories are carrying lots of inventory and your delivery to customers is poor. Sound familiar? If not, don’t read further.

Take the order you just sent to your new friends in Bangkok. A twelve week lead time and you realize you need it in six. Transport time is four weeks and so you change your request, completely disrupting their factory (for the fourth time this month). They come back and tell you that instead of the 100 units you wanted twelve weeks from now, they think they can give you 20 every other week starting in 6 weeks. That means that instead of 100 in twelve weeks you get 20 six weeks early, 20 four weeks early, 20 two weeks early, 20 on time, and 20 late. What is the measure of on time performance?

a) 80% - we got 4 out of 5 deliveries by the original request date.

b) 80% - we go 80% of the material by the due date.

c) 20% - 1 of 5 deliveries was within our on time window of +2, -2 (not knowing what is coming daily makes it really hard to clear receiving every day).

d) 0% - we needed 100 and not having all 100 really disrupted our internal operations.

e) 100% - they are trying really hard and it’s really not their fault.

The only answer that will cause us to fix our system is d). What do we need to fix? Go through the five whys and we have to get back to you cannot plan inside of lead time. Either get a better lead time or extend your planning horizon outside of lead time and then live with it. Anything else causes churn inside your extended enterprise and putting a feel good metric out there will not help a thing.

The one thing I always tell people about Six Sigma is that following the method will guarantee improvement with two caveats – the project work has to be supported (time and team) and you cannot violate the laws of physics.

Planning inside of lead time is violating the laws of physics, lead time tells you your planning is already finished. Creative metrics will not fix the system!

Notes from the Deployment Front

Sorry for the long delay in posting here. I’ve been working on taking a failed deployment and turning it around. It’s tedious work with a lot of sleepless nights trying to get a very successful company to understand how to become even better.

The good news is that it’s going in a very good direction. If you think you are good and want a good challenge, this is the place to be.

I will not talk about my company any more – way too many sensitive issues to be discussed in public. Instead, I’m going to start drawing on my past experiences to talk about things I think are important that are outside of what we teach Green Belts, Black Belts, and Master Black Belts.

My first topic will be how to identify a deployment that is going to fail.

Signs of a deployment that will fail – My top ten list:

1) Leadership clearly articulates all of the other things that are more important.

2) Leadership claims we are doing this only because negative data has been presented so many times.

3) Leadership believes that all process decisions must be okay with business guys who wouldn’t know a process if it bit them in the butt.

4) Leadership wants to object to calling this Six Sigma because they are “Lean”. This is while their material flow is abysmal.

5) No infrastructure is put in place around selecting and supporting project work.

6) Training takes place with no immediate tie to project work requiring tool usage.

7) People are sent to training without projects.

8) There is discussion around metrics that clearly do not reflect the health of our critical processes justifying them because the negative result is out of our immediate control.

9) There is no authority to assure data integrity.

10) RTY only includes tests where we collect data.

Notes from the deployment frontline 31 October 05

Getting the Right Change Agents on the bus

Sorry about the two month delay – babies and work have consumed my time. Alison Grace is sleeping most of the night and Mom is feeling almost normal. Work is going from tactical to strategic as we are beginning to understand the value of focusing change agents on the things that distract us from our long term and short term goals. We are funding tremendous investments in structural changes through cash flow. Serious, heady stuff that requires focus.

On the subject of choosing Champions and Change Agents, last time I contended –

“The common advice of “best and brightest” is necessary but not sufficient. You choose change agents based on something that is encoded in their DNA and is easy to measure. More on that next week. Just know that I believe that the advice that a good change agent is a good manager is terrible advice.”

I will start you with the advice of my good friend Bob Wilson. Bob consults in the area of what I call Human Architecture using a tool called Predictive Index (PI). I am not promoting PI, but will tell you two of the largest practitioners of PI, Bob Wilson and Elmano Nigri, have taken a specific interest in studying Six Sigma and improving results by doing a better job of picking change agents. They know more about us than any other users of behavior predictors that I know of.

My layman’s understanding of the terms Bob uses below –

There are four factors Predictive Index uses to describe a person’s drive –

1) A – The drive to dominate. Presence of this drive is a person who thinks their ideas are the best ideas; they want to win and don’t mind a bit of head butting. Absence of this drive is a person who avoids conflict. People with the presence of this drive are motivated by money because it buys them freedom.

2) B – The drive for external response. Presence of this drive is a person who is empathetic, who can read people well; this person is a good communicator and is concerned about how the message is received. Absence of this drive is a communication avoider, a person that prefers email and voicemail to face to face contact. People with the absence of this drive are often perceived as arrogant and aloof, while what they really are is unaware of their affect on others. People with the presence of this drive are motivated by money because it buys them prestige.

3) C – The drive for stability. Presence of this drive is a person who are very process oriented, that like to know the process and work the process in its proper order. Absence of this drive is a person who is impatient, and like to have 100 balls in the air at once; these impatient folks respond only to deadlines. People with the presence of this drive are motivated by a sense of team and family; they are natural team players.

4) D – The drive for certainty. Presence of this drive is a person who sees the world as black and white; they have difficulty delegating. Absence of this drive is a person who sees the world as a million shades of grey; they will delegate anything even if it is not appropriate. People with the presence of this drive are motivated by a sense of fairness.

Bob’s thoughts on the subject, an excerpt of a newsletter he sends to CEO’s –

Twice in the last two weeks, consultants came back from different client visits telling the same story. They told of situations where CEO’s had directed major change efforts within a specific area. In both cases:

• The CEO had put people in charge of the specific area that needed to be changed.
• The areas were troubled.
• It wasn’t known what was to be done, only that something needed to be changed.
• Performance stunk at the beginning of the effort and continues to stink.
• Whatever change that was supposed to have been incorporated was to have occurred months previously.
• There was no indication the change was going to happen any time soon.
• The CEO was still waiting for change to happen.

Unfortunately, these two cases are representative of many more we’ve seen over the years.

In many cases, waiting for change to occur, even when you’ve directed it, is the equivalent of waiting for Godot and as we likely remember, Godot never came. The waiting was for naught. For these waiting CEO’s, change isn’t going to happen until something changes. And something, whatever it is, isn’t going to change on its own.

Don’t get me wrong, change can happen on its own. Generally, however, this kind of change could better be described as somewhere between attrition and entropy. People are either allowing external influences to exert more force than is their due or allowing variance to take over from conformity. Unfortunately, this kind of change occurs when things are getting worse, not better. And, yes, it can take place on its own.

However, when you want things to change both systemically and for the better, three things have to be in place:

1. Support must exist for the change from management
2. Change agents need be involved in driving the change
3. Administrators need to see that whatever has changed will become a part of the new system

The first building block is exactly what was put in place in the cases above – support and direction from management. Change was asked for, even directed. Yet, that alone obviously wasn’t enough.

Once it is determined that change is necessary, it is important that the person charged with leading that change is a Change Agent (a person with a high A as well as lower D and C in their Predictive Index profile); or that someone within the team that is driving that change is a Change Agent. Why? Anyone who does not have this profile is not comfortable with change, let alone the driving of it.

That’s not to say Change Agents are always successful drivers of change. They may not have the skill set or intelligence to make the required change happen. But, they at least start with the propensity to change. They just may not be successful.

In both of the examples referred to above, the people charged with driving change were highest D’s – people driven to do the right thing. They were both successful managers. They both were excellent administrators. But, they were both failing the task of driving change. They did not know where to begin. In fact, every effort they made to begin was thwarted before it got off the blocks with one simple thought: “What if I fail”?

Highest D’s are uncomfortable driving change because they fear doing the wrong thing or making a mistake. It is easier for them to do nothing than it is to make a mistake. Hence, when being asked to drive change, nothing gets done. And, the CEO waits.

On the other hand, people with Change Agent profiles thrive on change. They look at a situation and ask themselves, “How can I make this better?” They’re not concerned about making a mistake. If they do, oh well. They’ll just try another solution. That’s why you want Change Agents driving change. Change demands comfort with mistakes and Change Agents have that. Mistakes prohibit change for highest D’s because highest D’s won’t tolerate them!

In our most recent newsletter, I described the success or lack thereof achieved by 6 Sigma Black Belts with different profiles (6 Sigma Black Belts are people who are charged with creating change within an organization and who are measured by the effectiveness of the change they create.) The chart below recaps the results.

Black Belt Success Rate: Who Would You Choose?

Profile Characteristics	Success Rate
Highest A, Lower C, Lower D than A:	100%
High A, Lower C, Higher D than A:	33%
All other profiles in Sample:	0%

Statistics prove and empirical evidence supports that if you want change, you need to have high A’s who are also lower C’s and D’s driving it.

I’m not advocating you fill your organization with Change Agents. There are many places where you likely don’t want change. Wherever you have high, particularly highest A’s, you will have change. Like it or not. Thus, you don’t want A’s everywhere. You only want them where creation of change or adaptation to it is a necessary part of what it takes to be successful.

In fact, I’m not even advocating that Change Agents be the only people involved in change. High C’s and D’s (Administrators) should be part of the process and should be around to institute, implement and document the change after it has been developed. Once Change Agents develop a solution, they like to start to change it again before it is truly standardized. And change really isn’t complete until it’s been instituted and controlled. For change to be successful, Administrators need to see that it’s a part of the new system.

Ultimately, if you don’t have Change Agents where you are looking for change to occur, you are likely to be waiting for change to happen long after it’s been directed. And if you don’t have Administrators locking in the change, the success intended to be achieved won’t come to pass.

I’d suggest you look around at those places where you’re waiting for change to occur. Ask yourself the following questions, “Have I directed the change to take place?” “Do I have a Change Agent (high A that is higher than both C and D) driving the change?” “Do I have Administrators (high C’s and D’s who are assuring that the change will be instituted?” If any of the answers are no, likely, you’ve got some rearranging to do. Or, you should learn to be comfortable waiting.

Waiting is a solution I wouldn’t advocate, however.

Thanks for reading and I hope you found these insights helpful. And, I hope you don’t have to wait too much longer.

Bob Wilson

So real quick, my take on what Bob’s message means.

We want Black Belts who highest drive is that they think their ideas are the best ideas and they want to win. I think this is true because you send the change agent into a team where only one person owns the problem at the beginning – the change agent.

We want their communication style to be middle of the road – neither high nor low B. This is because we don’t want the message crafted to suit the audience (highest B) or delivered without a feel for how it impacts others (lowest B).

We want impatient people (low C) for two reasons. First, even though we teach this as a group of serial activities, in reality you have many things active at once. Usually it is driven by waiting for data. Second, you want people who respond to deadlines (remember stage gate reviews?). Who do you want to own the Control phase? Highest C people of course, not the change agent.

And finally we want middle of the road for certainty precisely for behavior around delegation. Control implies ownership is given to those who run the process, so ownership that only the change agent has at the beginning of a project has to be completely given back. Highest D’s don’t delegate, Lowest D’s delegate anything. Those in the middle delegate when there is someone appropriate on the receiving end.

Do other patterns work?

Yes. Highest A, lowest B seem to bring the most innovation, but need a PR person as well so you don’t want too many of them.

I also know of some true outliers who among the best but their pattern do not fit. It appears to be a function of exceptional intelligence and high energy. I am talking about two people I know out of greater than 10,000 BB’s I have observed over the last 11 years. So if you are going with the odds, go with Bob’s advice.

Just my opinion, but Bob and Elmano have thousands of data points between them to substantiate.

Notes from the deployment frontline 31 Aug 05

First things first

Having been raised 20 miles from salt water in Tampa, I am in love with warm and salty water and mesmerized by hurricanes. That said, I think we should all pause this week and think about what is really important.

Those of us that think our companies, our roles, or the role of Six Sigma are of the utmost importance are wrong. Take the time to say a prayer to your higher being in whatever form that takes and do something to benefit the folks in Louisiana and Mississippi if you can afford to.

Also go take the time to go look in the mirror, it is one of the most important diagnostic tools people and companies have (thank you Marty Rayl). It is also one of the least used.

I have been my role for a little over five months. The people who know me from my consulting life are baffled that I didn’t just come in a start waving the lean and six sigma flags. After all, my title is Lean Six Sigma Executive. I have instead refused to be defined by the title and have spent most of my time and political capital looking at our critical processes and getting real data on performance. I have also spent very little time building a Lean Six Sigma infrastructure empire around me although it is a popular thing to do.

What have I learned?

• Our Leaders are looking in the mirror, either on their own or willingly when challenged.
• The first five months have been about aligning strategy with planning, and understanding clearly where we are.
• The focus of the trained Six Sigma resources next year will be mainly Lean.

Before anyone tells me about Lean Six Sigma, let me just tell you that it’s all a load of poop. Lean and Six Sigma have always been joined, but they are separate but equal partners. Ask any of the implementers from the mid 80’s at Motorola and they will tell you that Cycle Time Reduction accelerated everything.

So what does an implementation look like if you don’t just hit the ground running with Six Sigma? Simple -

1. Take and honest look at yourself and define who you are and who you need to be.
   
   
2. Align strategy and annual planning with the honest view of you.
   
   
3. Define the few metrics, besides financials, that show that we are making progress or not.
   
   
4. Align reward systems with metrics and define the cheater metrics as well in the reward system. Make sure what is rewarding is also in line with the metrics for the majority of your employees who work for you because they believe in what they do. Some examples of this type of person are most of your technicians, engineers, nurses, pharmacists, … Communicate strategy and plans broadly and consistently.
   
   
5. Map the Value Streams of the few key end to end processes. Map flow of materials and services; flow of information, and flow of cash.
   
   
6. Identify disruptions in two passes. First pass is the process as it exists today; the second is the process as it will exist if you meet near term growth targets. The disruptions are your project areas (yes, Goldratt is right). Don’t get hung up on hard savings (today’s issues) vs. soft savings (growth facilitating projects). Just make sure there is a balance between the two (thank you Larry Bossidy)
   
   
7. Charter and plan projects (preferably as part of next years operating plan).
   
   
8. Take care of the human architecture. This has two forms. The first is team dynamics, make sure your folks who need to be trained have been trained. This includes the seven basics tools and in my world would include many of Shainin’s tools. The second is choosing and nurturing champions and change agents. The common advice of “best and brightest” is necessary but not sufficient. You choose change agents based on something that is encoded in their DNA and is easy to measure. More on that next week. Just know that I believe that the advice that a good change agent is a good manager is terrible advice.
   
   
9. Do Lean – Standard Work, 5s, SMED, and other Lean tools are among the best variation reduction tools you will ever meet. I can get any of you the first 75% of most of your BB projects with these tools and I can do it in the gap between M and A in DMAIC. Why would you do it any other way? Go get the first 75% and then see what is most important.
   
   
10. Do Six Sigma – this is for those things that don’t give you what you need with Lean. This may be because they require much more sophisticated analysis tools. It is more likely they just need more time and someone (I nominate BB’s) willing to roll up their sleeves and do the blue collar grunt work of digging through massive amounts of data and making sense of it (analysis phase tools).
    
    
11. Share the learning broadly and democratically. What I mean by this is that very little of what is done in Six Sigma or Lean is sensitive enough not to be shared with everyone in your company’s value stream. Those who are driving improvement will always stay ahead of those who are trying to learn by watching.
    
    
12. Repeat.

As anyone knows that has done this successfully, there is overlap between all of this; steps are the main focus area, but not the only focus area. For example, I will be doing some legitimate Six Sigma projects immediately. We are somewhere around steps 4 or 5.

First things first.

Please remember the hurricane survivors. Also offer a prayer for the curses of poverty and wealth.

When I accepted this invitation from Mike Cyger, he suggested that I post once a week and so I have set aside Tuesday mornings from 5:00 to 7:00 to put down something I think is worthwhile. This week I got a call at 4 am from my beautiful wife, Aimee, telling me to catch the first flight home because she was in labor. Alison Grace Cone was born at 8:06 pm Eastern Daylight Savings Time on August 23rd. Mom and baby are doing great.

Because of this, I am going to share something from a good friend and even better MBB. He was kind enough to share these thoughts with me earlier. As anyone knows who has ever tried to document their thoughts, this sharing is one of the ultimate acts of trust and friendship. Enjoy.

From my good friend Ernesto Garcia, PhD -

The Champion

Long time ago, in another country, I had the pleasure of working as a consultant for the VP of Quality of an international paper company. As usual in consulting, we used to have some conversations over lunch. In one of those informal meetings I asked him “why are you in this position.” His answer was simple: “I have been here many years, formed most of the current VP´s, and they will listen and act when I ask them to do something for our Quality initiative.” This answer, and the training and mentoring of many Black Belts during their first and second projects, led me to one conclusion: all projects need at least three ingredients to succeed: technical competence, political influence and sound allocation of resources.

As all you know in Six Sigma projects, the Black Belt and process experts provide the technical competence or “know how.” This is a matter of training and application of tools appropriate to the context of the problem to solve and, of course, experience with the process and product where the problem lies. On the other hand, exerting political influence and making sure the allocation of needed resources is obtained, the main tasks of the Champion, make the implementation of company policy to happen. Therefore, how can a Champion be a good implementer of policy through Six Sigma projects?

Perhaps the answer is in the common trait I have seen in successful Champions: constant search for the answer of three questions when they deal with Black Belts and their projects:

1) What is the relation of your project with the objectives of the business?

2) What have you done to satisfy these objectives within your project, and

3) What do you need from me to make it happen?

The first question needs a lot of involvement from the Champion. She, in her position, can normally understand better where the company is heading than the Black Belt; she is closer to the top. Thus, the selection of the project, and its Critical to Quality or CTQ, should pass an acid test: leverage and support of company policy. The development of a simple tree diagram linking the objective(s) of the business to the project CTQ during the definition phase is critical.

The second question has to do with the correct application of the methodology after project definition: MAIC. A Champion ensures that all phases are covered in detail. Thus, she will always ask for proof of: (1) reliability, integrity, and validity of the data used (Measure), (2) Rigor of the investigation (Analysis), (3) Feasibility and impact of the changes recommended (Improve), and (4) Proof of sustainability of the solution (Control).

The third and last question has to do more with our Champion’s commitment and her ability to influence the organization, but it can be summarized in the allocation of one resource: the time she takes asking those questions to her Black Belt, as well as the time she obtains from other members of the organization to help the Black Belt during his project.

Good Champions have at least one meeting with their Black Belts every two weeks, excellent Champions schedule meetings every week. These meetings do not take much time, just 15 minutes. The important thing is to look for answers to the above questions in each meeting, as well as to obtain a list of key persons the Champion must influence for the sake of the project and the company. Outstanding Champions make telephone calls, aisle conversations, and other types of contact to ensure that key members of the organization will commit their time and support for the project.

At the very end this is not new for a successful Champion: it is called leadership.

Notes from the deployment frontline
Why does this stuff work?

For those of you who don’t know me, I work in the land of Laverne and Shirley for a fine 100 year old company that is trying to change without losing what makes people want to spend a career here. I am five months into the adventure and having more fun than I ever did in my ten plus years of consulting for many of the movers and shakers in the Six Sigma world. I intend to share with you a thread of thoughts on what the frontline of change looks like.

Recently I have been in awe of rediscovering something I first learned in 1984. It is why this stuff really works. I have been working with two people who I have just recently met, Ernesto and Mike. Let me tell you a bit about each and come back to why this works.

Ernesto is a Mexican national, educated at Tecnológico de Monterrey, Monterrey Tech to us gringos. He has a BS and MS in Engineering from there. He has a PhD from a US college obtained on a Fulbright scholarship. Smart guy. Also has a great value system and was taught it by a guy who sounds like my father. He is dedicated to doing the same with his children. He is helping me create a model so that my company can better understand and support something they honestly don’t understand right now. When painting the picture for him of what I wanted he honestly has become excited by it and is bringing thought to the table that would not have been there for someone who is just going through the motions. He is one of the finest humans and one of the best Master Black Belts I have ever met.

Mike is an engineer from Ohio. I just found out he is leaving the company next week. It saddens me, but I also know that he is leaving for the right reason; he has found an opportunity that truly excites him. He will be improving what is already one of the finest health care systems in the world. Mike brings honesty and passion with him to the job. It is fun to work with him because he truly gets excited when he learns new things about a system he has been embedded in for years. He is a fine human and will be the best Black Belt in healthcare in the Americas.

Why am I having fun? Simple. Learning and watching people learn is among the best of the human experience.

Why does this stuff work? There are all sorts of theories out there about change management and I think most are wrong. There is a scene from the movie The Breakfast Club that I think sums up why people change better than anything else I have ever seen. The scene is between Claire (Molly Ringwald) and Allison (Ally Sheedy). Claire and Allison are on opposite ends of the high school social spectrum yet this scene finds Claire being kind to Allison.

Allison – “Why are you being nice to me?”
Claire – “Because you are letting me.”

Relationship to what we do? Change happens when the people who built and run a successful enterprise actually let their guard down and let people like Ernesto and Mike help them.

I train, help, challenge, cajole and many other things to get people ready to let their guard down on the one side and to accept the invitation on the other.

I live for the moments where these two points in time converge. It is the fulfillment of the human experience for me.

It is beautiful.

Gary Cone
Master Black Belt

Gary Cone has 25 years of Business Systems experience and is a pioneer in the Six Sigma principles and management philosophy. He is a recognized leader in the application of statistical techniques to business processes, in data driven decision-making to support sound business strategy, and in achieving significant bottom line results. Gary has led Six Sigma implementations in a multitude of companies (including frontrunners Motorola, AlliedSignal, GE, and Danaher) with verifiable bottom-line impact of several billion dollars in savings to date.

Gary was one of the original architects of Six Sigma when it all started at Motorola in the 1980’s and has continued to refine the application of this transformational process into one of the most powerful business tools for corporations throughout the world today. As a prominent Six Sigma authority, Gary has dedicated his career to helping make Six Sigma a stronger force across companies. He has a rare combination of proven frontline technical performance, executive experience and over a decade of service as a trusted advisor and consultant.

He continues to serve as a member of the GPS Executive Council, providing his leadership to guide the delivery of GPS services.

Gary is a member of the International Society of Six Sigma Professionals.