I have recently completed a ‘Five S’ (see isixsigma dictionary) on a materials procurement process, and have had the most buy in this year for process improvement. Why?

1. Because especially ‘Sort’ is simple for all to understand, it’s basically an organised spring clean
2. You leave your FIRST meeting with a plan of action that can be executed within days, this often takes longer with DMAIC
3. Because the results are visual. Always take before and after photos

Once you have this win and have been seen to deliver, you can start putting more intricate process improvement methods in place like Value Stream Mapping, data collection etc without your stakeholders noticing or even better with their consent.

I am interested in your experiences and first impressions of deploying Lean

Lost Tools # 2 Data

In this quick fire working environment using a ‘Sore Thumb Approach’ strategy (something hurts so you go fix it quick), we don’t always have time to collect the data. I’ve just taught the Measure phase to a wave of Green Belts and other than a SIPOC IT’S ALL ABOUT COLLECTING DATA. It’s easy and sometimes beneficial to just use the core tools:

• Run Charts
• Process Flowcharting
• Fishbone and 5 Whys
• Tally Charts
• Histograms
• Scatter Plots

But real Y=f(x) data collection; looking at all the up and down stream data collection points is invaluable.

I’m actually downing tools for a fortnight and just going out and getting that data.

If that means trailing through paper work with my tally chart or standing at the side of a railway line or station clicking my ‘data counter’ then so be it. I got to a stage last year where I thought I was too good to go out and get my hands dirty collecting data for a week or so, but sometimes that’s the best thing you can do.

Any thoughts?

A good project gets you the facts, the data. Talk objectively with those facts and you have a water tight case for any ‘rhetoric’!

In my Blog Man v. Machine I talked about PBL; ’Performance Based Leadership’, basically Behavioral Science that at Bechtel they use hand in hand with DMAICT. They have an acronym called NORMS that I use when stating a case or giving difficult feedback. This has dug me out of many tricky confrontations. When giving feedback ensure it’s:

• Not an Interpretation – an unbiased statement about an event or behaviour
• Observable – Based on specific behaviours or events that are actually seen or heard
• Reliable – 2 or more people can independently agree on events that are seen or heard
• Measurable – a number can be used to describe behaviour
• Specific – who, what, where, when, context, sequence

I find it especially useful for Black Belts who often have the facts and the data and it’s especially useful in providing feedback to colleagues / individuals.

Do you have any other methods of delivering effective feedback?

I have recently gone through ’Train The Trainer’ for Green Belt. I discovered on the training some excellent tools I had not been using, or have just plain forgotten about.

Over the next few Blogs I would like to talk about ’Lost Tools’ and ask why they are not being used, and the impact on not using them, both on the Improvement Project and on the business.

Lost Tools #1 ’The Project Criteria Check List’

A well conceived business case is the key to project success. But how many projects have you seen or even been given, that do not meet the criteria that was taught to us in week 1 of Black Belt training? The checklist which should be in all the Six Sigma Training material reads something like this:

• Are the goals of the project clear and realistic at this stage?

• Does this problem affect our ability to successfully deliver our key business objectives?

• Does this problem stem from an on-going, high volume process?

• Is this process measurable?

• Is this problem creating defects?

• Can we estimate the potential business benefits in cash?

• Will this project lead to improvements with little or no capital?

• Can this project be completed in 4 to 6 months?

• Does the process owner approve and support this project?

• Is the scope of the project clear?

If the answer is No to any of these, and you still take the project forwards, it will spell trouble, big trouble downstream. I’ve been there, most Black Belts have.

If the answer is YES to all the criteria above, I submit that all you need is a good understanding of the tools to deliver great success within the business.

But do all your projects tick all these boxes, all the time? In the transactional world, my world, I would be surprised.

What do we do?

• We now have a deployment that needs to be fuelled with savings.
• We need to justify our own existence, and we may not have any text book process improvement projects out there.

“Get in Lean! Call it a Lean project” comes the cry.

But does every proposed business case that is not a DMAIC project fall into the Lean bucket?

Proposed Solution

• Strong Six Sigma leadership on quality control for potential initiatives, UP FRONT.
• Someone who is not scared to say NO to the bosses.
• Someone who can decipher a good business case from a bad one.

I feel like I am stating the obvious here, but the obvious is so often overlooked.

What does your deployment do to stop ’dodgy’ business cases getting through? Do you have a different / better list of criteria to check your business cases? What other ’lost tools’ can you think of?

We must be data driven! We must manage by fact! What happens when we don’t have any data? What happens when we can’t tweak a bit of machinery to improve our primary metric? What happens when one of our critical Xs is a behavioural problem? Or, one of our action items in the Improve stage is something a person has to do, who for the last 10 years has been working that process in a different way, their way?

This is when behavioural science can help RDMAICT and some techniques are summarised as follows:

Recognise Stage: For greatest behaviour change pick the projects where people are feeling the pain NOW and a defect causes almost immediate problems not problems that MAY be felt in two years time.

Lesson 1 in behavioural science (At Bechtel they call it Performance Based Leadership) was peoples’ behaviour changes the quickest when consequences are immediate and certain. When consequences are in the future and are uncertain the motivation to change is negligible.

Measure Stage: When going through tools like the fishbone, be conscious that where there are behavioural Xs they may be a lack of one or more of the following;

• Direction: Have people been told clearly what to do, and the strategic reason behind why they have to do the task a certain way.
• Competence: Simply do they have the skills to do what they have been told.
• Opportunity: Have they the time and tools (amongst other things) to do the job
• Motivation: Have the factors that motivate that individual and his team to do the job right first time been considered. This analysis is subjective. The table below shows what happens when you have full DCOM and when you have a stage missing.

Figure 1: DCOM Model (Bechtel)

Improve Stage: Actions not being completed in your implementation Plan? Chances are that particular task has not got a consequence attached to it.

Again, these consequences must be immediate and certain. They can be positive (preferable) or negative. An effective consequence is booking team members in to ‘present out’ their part of the project to the executive on a specific date. If that doesn’t get the action done the person is either near retirement, a masochist who loves being shown up and reprimanded in public or plain mad.

Lesson 2 in behavioral science was telling people to do something is often not enough; a consequence has to be in place to ensure the task is done.

Control Stage: Your team members have all spent time and effort in your workshops. When the project is complete and you’re sipping tea with the boss, the cash saving projected on the wall behind you, don’t forget them, don’t take all the credit. This will lead to “extinction”; basically they have made the effort and want some recognition but have had little or no reward. When the call comes for project 2 I lay a penny to a pound that they won’t be volunteering. Team members need plenty of Positive Reinforcement. They are our customers at the end of the day.

These are just some of the techniques you can use. The main thing is to use these tools not ad hoc, but everyday, until they become “business as usual”.

What behavioral techniques do you use within the RDMAICT process?

People only jump when they are pushed. Kotter in his book Leading Change (1994) talks about creating the "Burning Platform". My mental image of this burning platform is a team of guys and / or gals on a burning oil rig knowing the oil rig is going to sink but only jumping into the murky depths of the sea when they feel the heat of the flames.

The car industry is permanently on the burning oil rig platform or in the sea. There is no greater burning platform than the competitiveness of the car manufacturing sector where complacency, will lead to huge financial losses and even Bankruptcy. ‘Rover’, can you believe was the third biggest car manufacturer in the world in the late 1960s. That’s like Ford going bust today!

Until you have these market forces or artificially create the illusion of them, your Six Sigma deployment will never be priority within your business.

The real art is for your deployment to flourish even when you have very little competition (or even a virtual monopoly like I have on the railways), when it takes all your powers of persuasion especially when your team members do not work for you to drive through change and when you do not always have the data or even the processes in place. If you can get projects to completion and save money in this environment then you can argue that in many ways you are better than Toyota.

In my next blog I will talk about PBL Performance Based Leadership (based on behavioural science) which our deployment have driven as a philosophy alongside the DMAIC methodology to help create an illusion of "The Burning Platform".

I am trying to make Six Sigma meetings at my project in the UK fun and a little ‘different’ than the normal meetings there.

I am gathering up fun exercises and video clips to play in between facilitation of the DMAIC tools.

I will share with you one GREAT team exercise (I got from my company) which is a team building exercise that will break down barriers in teams especially when the group have just met.

Cane Exercise

All you need is:

1. A 2 metre bamboo cane. Get from DIY store.

2. 6 people minimum

You get the bamboo cane and balance it just on your forefingers. (Your forefingers are under the bamboo cane).

You then state “All I want you to do as a group is lower the cane onto the floor”

With that, you lower the cane.

You then state “everybody stand up and get round the cane” In the case of 6 people; stand 3 people either side of the cane.

Then you raise the cane to chest height and state “Now as a group, lower the cane using only your forefingers.” Each team member must have two forefingers on the cane at the same time. Only the forefingers can be used. For example NO THUMBS.

You also state, if anyone cheats you will take the cane off them and put it back to your chest height.

Outcome

No group I have tried this on can lower the cane straight off. The cane actually rises. It is then the task of the group to work out within the rules how to lower the cane.

Purpose

One person can lower the cane easily. But, when others have their input, a simple exercise for one can for a team become impossible without planning and teamwork.

I would really appreciate sharing with fellow bloggers and readers any similar exercises or videos you have.

When you help your neighbour to paint his fence, is he doing you the favour? NO

When you lend your friend 50 dollars, is he doing you the favour? NO

When you help a colleague fix his process, is he doing you the favour? NO

Make sure your colleagues understand this. If they think they are doing you a favour, you’re starting off on the wrong foot straight away.

OK, I know we get paid to do this, but I don’t know about you, but I can work with numerous departments on numerous ‘problems’. That’s one of the good things about being a Black Belt.

A new colleague spoke to me the other day saying “if you really want, I have a problem in my department that you can fix”.

This attitude is wrong. It might not be his fault. The last Black Belt probably went round with his begging bowl asking “please let me help you, ohhhh please….”

How do we change this attitude?

1. Get a good project pipeline flowing.

The more projects you have, the easier it is to ditch the project team with the wrong attitude. Sounds harsh, but a team with poor motivation is slowing you down, wasting your time and wasting the company money. A BB with a large pipeline, I argue, transmits an air of confidence. The BB has the attitude; I’m here to help if you want my help.

2. ‘Create a Burning Platform’ Kotter J ‘Leading Change’

Make sure you communicate the problem statement especially in terms of cash to the right people. People will soon shift once they know (or more importantly the bosses know) the gravity of the situation.

3. Create short term goals / milestones and 4. Communicate your success.

Keep your Six Sigma projects short and sweet. Projects that drag on for six months need to be carved up into key milestones to keep motivation at a maximum

5. Celebrate Success;

with plenty of beer, champagne, donuts or whatever your Six Sigma team deem to be a celebration. Remember, celebration is subjective to the individual.

I would be very interested in how you have established a culture of ‘pull’ (Colleagues at work coming to you for help) in your Six Sigma deployment.

Much is said about how Six Sigma will radically change your company, how it will save millions of pounds / dollars, and how it will change your company’s culture. Little is said about on of the major problems most Six Sigma deployments even the mature ones face; the "non believers."

They are a splinter group with pockets in every area of your company, from the executive down to lower management.

Their tactics for undermining Six Sigma is often one of passive resistance; not turning up for workshops, not contributing in meetings and / or reneging on actions in your Implementation Plan.

They make no open statements of dissent, just the odd snide comment about Karate (referring to the belts) or how they’ve seen similar process improvement concepts come and go; or even crazier still, how they have no time to improve their processes as they are all soooo busy.

You may not even know they are undermining you; hell, they may not even know they are undermining you.

They send their ‘least capable’ staff (the staff that they can afford to loose for a few days) on the yellow belt / green belt training courses. They give you ‘boil the ocean’ projects or withhold data that would make them look bad.

The fact is, over the short to medium term they are going to erode your Six Sigma deployment, but long term they could destroy your deployment or even destroy the whole concept globally, which is a shame because IT WORKS.

I would be interested in what you say or have said to these people (the ‘non-believers’) and what you do in your company to ‘sell’ the Six Sigma methodology.

A Black Belt friend of mine was telling me about deployment in his company. I listened to his problems patiently and then said to him, “It looks like you have employed a ‘bunch’ of Black Belts who are brilliant at the statistics, but when it comes to facilitating a project team, who might for example have come off the night shift on the shop floor, they (the Black Belts) can’t get the team or the processes to change -- thus few improvements and consequently little cash savings”. He admitted I was right.

I was generalising here, but what I meant was, process owners and team members, who might still work on site or are perhaps foreman or gang leaders promoted from the ‘shop floor’, often find it hard to relate to the type of Black Belt who is University trained and statistically minded. At school they would have been at opposite ends of the playground, one kicking a ball around the school yard and the other playing on his ‘Game Boy’ or even looking out of the window of the classroom doing extra maths or playing chess. This leads to a fundamental question: “Is Six Sigma really about Statistics or is it about process change? And in addition, ”Is a ‘good’ Black Belt someone who knows ‘Gage R and R’ or someone who can meet a group of co-workers and using the tools, make improvements and thus savings?”

Do we as Black Belts get caught up in the technical side and forget about whom we really are? I.E. change agents.