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In the Six Sigma Handbook, by Thomas Pyzdek, he defines nine criterion’s on which to score a project. All nine of these criteria fall into one of the following 5 Key elements for success without which failure will most likely occur. These five element are not only important to have at the beginning of a project but you will have to continually clarify them all the way through your project to keep them up-front, supported and visible to all until completion. As such I will give you the “signs” that will show you if you are loosing the focus on any one of the five.
1. A Common Vision and aligned goals: Having a vision for a company, personal, or Six Sigma project goal or objective is one thing, making it common and everyone aligned and focused on it is another. What I mean by a vision is what will things look like when we are done? You maybe able to visualize it yourself but does everyone else “see” the same thing. Unusually not and when that happens [sign] you will see and feel confusion. The best way to solve this is to insure everyone involved takes part in creating the vision (brainstorm it) and word smith it until all can live with the end result. Then when the team is slipping bring, it back and review it.
2. A Real Need to Improve. This need can NOT be something nice to do. It has to be something we HAVE TO do to succeed. Usually if it is tied to a top level company objective that the company is having a hard time meeting it IS a “have to do” objective. If it is not at this level what [sign] you will see is very slow progress and eventually the project canceled. Why? Because team members and managers had other priorities and this project was not a high one to them. This causes those delays to happen. As I like to say this need, needs to be something that will impact the company and all see that to make this improvement, this project needs to succeed. If things slip you need to work with your sponsor and insure that priorities have not changed.
3. An Established Method to improve. Many time people are told to go fix something and sometimes that works, but when the solution is not obvious you need a method to develop and implement a workable solution. In our case Six Sigma IS that method. A five step method (process) based on facts and data focused on your customer’s value to solve the need and grow your business. What happens if you don’t have a method? [sign] you will have false starts. Put another way, have you ever been in a meeting where once again an issue comes up that was suppose to be solved last week, last month or last year? Those are fixes that were done with no method to the solution. When you see this during your project step back and look at your six sigma methodology and see if you have to refocus the team. An Example of this is trying to fix the problem from what was learned during or at the end of the Measure step. This leads to skipping analysis were we do a “Deep Dive” for the real root cause of what we see.
4. Committed Resources to do the task. The key word here is COMMITTED! Think about who has committed resources to a bacon and eggs breakfast, the chicken or the pig? It is the PIG! The chicken has given you eggs but the pig has given you his life. That is commitment! On your project a manger or supervisor may say they will support the project with their people but they have not committed the resources until they have directed (schedule) them to be on the team and have worked out how to cover for them when they are gone. Covering does not mean they have to catch up on their own time, covering means someone else picks up tasks that they were assigned. How do you know you are loosing resources? [sign] you are feeling frustrated. An occasional loss of resources is one thing but having it happen all the time means frustration and lack of commitment of resource to be successful. Like “need”, this is an issue you should work with your project sponsor and it is an issue of priorities with other functional areas or the sponsor’s area.
5. Leadership Commitment to the project. Just like ‘resources,” the key word here is commitment. If the leadership is not committed to the project you will fail to get the support to make it happen. Committed like the “Pig”. If you do not have this you and your team will feel [sign] disappointment. This one element really leads back to the other four. With out your leadership’s commitment to the project, you will not get committed resources and you need to re-evaluate the projects Vision and need. Obviously Leadership does not see the need to do this and it must not be aligned to their goals and objectives or they do not see the same results (vision) coming from the project. Work with your sponsor to clear up these before you set forward.
If you have a good common vision that is aligned to strategic company goals and a real need by the company to meet those goals, then you can apply the six sigma methodology with committed resources and leadership to have a very successful project that will impact the company’s bottom line.
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Tags: Leadership, Method, Need, Resources, Vision
Nice cut and dry rundown of six sigma methodologies, especially the emphasis on commitment.
Thanks!