Training-An Investment in People

Is training best applied at the moment of application or is training something that is best done ahead of time so that when application does happen the trainee knows what to do?

The answer is-It depends. Training, by definition is skill based and generally is best done near the time of application. Education, on the other hand is learning that is not always tied to application right away, but conveys underlying concepts that help with execution later. In the business world, these two definitions are generally rolled up under the moniker of "training". This creates a problem with execution because managers generally understand that training is usually best applied near the point of usage and that most of the learning that occurs with training is through application of the learned skills. Some say this is 70% of the learning that occurs in training, while a frequently cited number of 10% is applied to classroom training environments.

Many times these figures are cited as a rationale for not investing in any sort of educational activities for employees. In reality, the majority of learning of skills is accomplished through application, and that number is probably close to 70%. This is where I part ways with other managers however. I believe that there are unmeasured benefits for investing in skills training and education of your people. Chief among these benefits is the sense that these employees get of being a part of the future, being thought of as a valid part of making that future happen. It can help create a sense of belonging to a group and enthusiasm for the vision that skills training is meant to support. I know these benefots exist because I have seen them in my people. By sending some of my less enthusiastic people to key skills training activities, I have seen their performance improve, their motivation increase.

Now for education. Education is those topics of knowledge that underly what you teach in skills training. Education is not necessarily meant to be applied immediately but accomplishes certain important goals such as: creating common language, creating common understanding of the world around us, creating common vision for what the future could be and should be, introducing different values and philosophies such as lean or six sigma. Here's the problem. Education often times gets mislabelled as training and is then usually done only when absolutely necessary. Sometimes when this happens, the side effects are painful. I'll give an example: I recently participated in a Value Stream Mapping exercise with a functional group. In this exercise I attempted to introduce several different lean ideas, such as balanced work, pull systems, cellular flow. The team was having none of it, mainly because they didn't know what it was before the event and did not have any opportunity to think about how it may apply to them. In the end of the event, we identified several Kaizen events that needed to be done in the process and we assigned leaders from amongst the group. Then a week passed, and nothing happened, then another couple of days passed, and nothing happened. So finally we got the leaders together and learned that they didn't know how to lead a Kaizen, no one had ever taught them what to do, so we had to have a quick class on Kaizen Leadership so that these folks could get it done. This is an example of education that should have been applied well before the event. If it was part of everyone's knowledge base, they would not have lost as much time trying to figure out what to do. I had one of my employees who was not a part of these events participate in the class and he immediately changed how he was approching a lean activity that I had given him months ago.

So, what is training and what is education? Sometimes the answer is the same and the only difference is the timing of the event, other times its the level of detail given, other times its the expectation set as an outcome of the session. It depends. Good examples of what are typical training topics are Six Sigma, and Lean Tools such as Visual Factory Management, 5S, Gage R&R, DOE, etc..

Some of these might also be educational topics as well but only at a lesser level of detail. For instance: Six Sigma Champion training is really education for champions on how to speak the language of six sigma and ask the right questions of the practitioners. Lean philosophies such as Value/Non-Value add, pull systems, flow, Kaizen Leadership, etc, while they have an application aspect to them, can also be educational at a higher level.
The bottom line is that training and education are investments in the future performance of the people in your organization. Just as Deming said that "It is not necessary to change, survival is not mandatory", so it is true with training and education. If we expect our people to change, we have to provide them with the road map for the change we seek, and the opportunity to learn how to read it.

Quality Methods Take Business by Storm; Whats Next?

Quality Circles, Total Quality Management, ISO 9001, QS9000, Baldrige, Six Sigma, Lean. All of these methods have at one time had lots of attention in the press and in the Quality profession. Looking back on these methods and their moment in the sun, I have one (maybe more than one) observation. All of these methods are valuable and have had major impact through disciplined application in a number of different companies but the one thing that strikes me is that all of these methods have been touted as a savior for all of our quality woes.
Quality Circles were the thing in the 70's and 80's as America struggled to catch up with quality advances made in Japan under the tutelage of Dr. Deming. ISO 9001 took off in Europe and Asia first but steadily gained momentum in the US in the 90's as more and more international companies started to make it a condition of business. The 80's and 90's saw the excitement about possible benefits of achieving the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. Much was made of stock indexes based on the Baldrige winners beating the S&P 500 by significant margins. Many of us lived through the PR assault for Six Sigma created by Jack Welch at GE and others. Dramatic claims were made about savings achieved using six sigma, attracting lots of media attention. Lean has been slowly but surely gaining adherent over the years as Toyota continues to perfect the method and tools that has led to the elimination of millions of dollars in waste around the world
I think this is an interesting parallel to what we have seen here in the US in the last 30 years when we think about the stock market. Many of these companies have been doing things well for years and they just happen to do it using lean, or six sigma, or ISO 9001, or Baldrige, or Quality Circles. People start to hear good things about this companu or that and what they are doing with Baldrige and how their stock price is up compared to everyone else and suddenly, everyone starts to thign that the secret to success is the quality method du jour. Then of course everyone wants to learn about the method and pretty soon, just like preppies in the 80's, everybody is doing that sexy new quality method and looking for the big payoff. Some find it, others don't. Which is just additional proof that its really not the method as much as the culture of the organization attempting to employ it.

Back to that interesting parrallel I mentioned before. I have been a working adult through the last two recessions (2008-Present, and 2001-2002) While I was not a working adult during the recessions in 1979-81, or 1987, I do remember them well and I think there is an interesting difference between these era's that relates to our attitude about quality. The recessions of 1979-81, and 1987 were what I would call "normal" recessions. Normal in that they were caused by normal economic factors such as inflation, failure to compensate for changes in economic conditions, oil shortages, conflict, etc....The recessions of 2001-02 and the present one are different from the others in that they have been primarily caused by irrational speculation coupled with poor business discipline. Not since the Great Depression has speculation caused so much upset in the world. Seems the old saying is true, those that dont learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

OK, so what does all this have to do with Baldrige, Lean and Six Sigma? They are parrallels for our experience in the markets, sexy methods that were going to come in like white knights and save us boatloads of money. Baldrige winners were supposed to outperform the S&P 500 by significant percentages, ISO 9001 was going to keep American companies in business, and of course, Six Sigma saved the day at GE, Allied Signal and others in the 90's. None of this is false information, all of these things happened. So why is it that every company is not going for Baldrige, or applying Six Sigma or Lean? Why are none of these the silver bullet once claimed? Basically, it comes down to what really matters and what we should be focused on: Quality Fundamentals. Quality Fundamentals or those things that help a company delight customers, drive continuous improvement, and enable excellence. Whether you call it ISO 9001, Baldrige, Six Sigma, or Lean, those are the things that matter most.

Requirement One for Continuous Improvement Culture-Significant Emotional Event

The Significant Emotional Event (SEE or Epiphany) is what is required to start down the road to developing a continuous improvement culture. CI culture change is driven by the survival instinct.

So what is the SEE? It is the realization that creeps into the leadership of a company that if something doesn't change, things are gonna get alot worse around here. Maybe the SEE comes from competition taking away market share, or customers firing you, or significant drops in sales and revenue. If the SEE comes from those kinds of things, chances are, the ship is already lost or at least the battle to turn things around will be alot tougher.

The trick is to sensitize the organization to EARLY signs that help deliver the SEE, while there's still time to right the ship. So what are the early signs? First, before going into that one thing that must be said is that the organization must saturate the company with the Voice of the Customer (VOC). I've talked about one of my favorite books on this; The Customer Driven Company by Richard Whiteley. In The Customer Driven Company, Mr. Whiteley makes the point that quality is from the customers' viewpoint. This is a common idea to lean practitioners where value is defined by the customer, same idea. The bottom line is that the organization has to start by accepting what the customer says as the truth and understand that we are all in the business of satisfying customer needs, not producing goods. Once the customer version of the truth is endorsed, metrics dashboards need to be built and monitored that give those early warning signs of trouble. That's not enough, however. You have to act.

A recent example illustrates the point. The Voice of the Customer for Company A stated, among other things, that responsiveness on quality issues and effectiveness of the response were key factors for improving customer attitudes towards the company. Metrics were established for measuring time to key milestones for response on customer complaints. Performance against these metrics was poor. In many cases Company A did not meet any milestones for any complaints in a given month, dates slipped, excuses started flying.

What didn't happen next is what was important. When the monthly metrics reviews showed continued poor performance, and a continuous improvement project was suggested, no action was taken. Why? Who knows, pick your excuse. Too much firefighting, not sure if its really important or not, can't be fixed. We heard 'em all. The bottom line is, the excuses worked. Management was lulled into indecisiveness because they decided it was easier to dismiss the metric as unimportant than to act on trying to improve it.

If the Voice of the Customer was truly present in this situation, the metric would drive a decision to improve the process based on the poor measured performance and the understanding that it is an important characteristic of quality in the customer's eyes. The hard lessons of the Significant Emotional Event would send a message throughout the organization that says "Believe what the customer tells you, it's important to our survival."

To quote a recent political expediency, "Never let a good crisis go to waste, its an opportunity to do important things you would otherwise avoid". Quality Leaders should recognize the early signs of the crisis and push the message for all its worth.

Tug of War: Customer Satisfaction vs Cost Reduction

This is the classic struggle of Quality. High quality and high customer satisfaction demands that suspect product be thoroughly scrutinized and a high standard set for its release to a customer. Customers expect this and quality staff strive to achieve it. The other side of the tug of war is cost. Business leaders are looking for every advantage they can get in reducing their costs and scrap product is one fo the biggest targets out there. Does it have to be this way? Can Quality and Business be on the same side? In short, the answer is, yes they can. What's required is a change in attitude and approach about quality. The two models below help to illustrate the different attitudes about quality. In the Economic Conformance Model illustrated below the classic Quality vs Cost struggle is portrayed. The underlying philosophy is that high quality costs money and that there exists a point of diminishing returns. That point is called the Economic Conformance Level (ECL). The ECL is the point above which higher quality is more costly to achieve that its "worth". This viewpoint pits those with "Quality" in their job title against those without in a dance to determine where the ECL exists for the business and promotes a "good enough" rationalization mindset that permeates every product quality decision eventually.

For a different perspective, we turn to the work of Phillip Crosby. Mr. Crosby developed a four part quality philosophy through years of proven experience. The four components of Mr. Crosby's philosophy are:

1. The definition of quality is conformance to requirements


2. The system of quality is prevention

3. The performance standard is zero defects

4. The measurement of quality is the price of nonconformance

Mr. Crosby's approach is illustrated below in the "Quality if Free" perspective on quality costs.

A key component of Mr. Crosby's philosophy is the definition of quality. "Quality is defined as a conformity to certain specifications set forth by management and not some vague concept of "goodness." These specifications are not arbitrary either; they must be set according to customer needs and wants." This statement is very important for what it really means in practice. It means that everyone from top management on down is engaged in the work of quality, not just those folks with "Quality" in their job title. It means that management must grapple with interpreting what the customer wants and needs and set policy to achieve those wants and needs, accepting the consequences of not achieving those results and relieving the pressure on the organization to rationalize quality and cost. I participated in a discussion recently which is frightening but illustrates the point. In this discussion, trend data were being reviewed and a poor trend was displayed for a product that is limping along. A meeting particpant then announced that the product would continue to be made for the next couple of years in response to customer demand. Since this was beyond what we had all come to understand was the End Of Life of this product, the questions started to fly. Will we now engage suppliers in process improvement? Will we perform process improvement in-house? Will we upgrade the raw materials? In short, will we invest in helping make and keep the product "good". The answer to all of these questions was No. Now here's the frightening part; tacked onto that No was a statement that the problems with the product were because we had accepted the notion that variation should decrease over time and the continuous improvement was driven by customer demands. "We should just say no" to tighter control limits requested by the customer is the viewpoint expressed. Clearly, this is not a customer-centric approach to quality and shows that there is still work to be done to change hearts and minds.

So how do people with Quality in their job title fit into this system? The unpleasant answer is that, in my opinion, Quality folks should do everything in their power to work themselves out of a job by working with top mangement to change the view of quality from a job responsibility to an organizational value. When everyone values quality from the customer perspective, and acts accordinly, "Quality" folks in the traditional sense will no longer be needed because there will be no need to police for quality. Quality becomes a  consultive role to management in interpreting customer needs and wants and giving guidance on what that means in practice.

Lean-Its Not Just for Manufacturing Anymore

Lean is not just for manufacturing anymore! Really, lean has always been about removing waste from processes, any processes, it doesn't matter if they are manufacturing processes or office processes. So why the disconnect? Why do so many look at Lean as something that applied to the manufacturing floor but not to their office space? I think the difference is in how you think about Lean. For instance, if you consider 5S. It is very easy to see how and where 5S is applied on the shop floor. It involves the physical arrangement of the space and the tools within it. Easy to see and wrap your brain around. Move into the office and things get a little harder but you can still see removing clutter and establishing organization and homes for everything, but move into the digital office and you've got problems. To see an opportunity for 5S you have to change your thinking because the mess and lack of organization is not right out in front of you, it might be in your computer. The same 5S concepts apply to your e-document & data storage and retrieval as would if you printed it and put it on your desk.

What is the focus of the Lean office then? Productivity, Efficiency, and Customer Satisfaction. Lets consider Productivity and Efficiency. A 2008 report on global productivity by Proudfoot Consulting showed that unproductive time (defined as time spent doing things that were unproductive for the company) rose to a new high of 34.3% or roughly 1.7 days per week per employee of time wasted. The story by industry sector is not much better. See the chart below for the sector breakout.

The number one cause cited for low productivity was staffing shortages and labor issues. This is great news if your thinking about how to implement a Lean Office because this means that by streamlining your processes, removing wasteful delays, reviews and approvals, you can bridge the staffing gap and do more with the same staffing levels.

Be sure of one thing though. If you're thinking about how to become more efficient, your competition is too. The chart below shows the gap that exists by geography between potential and realized gains in productivity. This data shows Europe and North America losing ground to Asia-Pacific and BRIC regions in terms of realizing producivity gains. The really bad news in this is that the staffing shortage issues don't exist in those regions, meaning that even as they work to gain efficiency and productivity, they have no shortage of labor to bridge the gap.

Here's an example of a ripe opportunity for waste reduction. How many of us receive reports that we dont get much from? Or maybe we dont even read them at all. According to the 2008 Global Productivity Report, Managers said they needed on average 6.6 reports to do their job, but received 10 per month. Meaning that 34% of the reports created every month are not needed. How much staff time is spent preparing those reports? The chart below shows the data broken out by best and worst. In the west, we are swimming in reports! This is a waste of your time but also the people that have to put these together each month.

That covers Productivity and Efficiency but what about Customer Satisfaction? I mentioned earlier that to think about Lean in the digital age, we have to change our paradigm. In the lean digital office environment, we first must understand that everyone has a customer, internal or external, and that all customers have legitimate needs that we can fulfill. To improve customer satisfaction in the Lean Office, just as in the Lean Manufacturing setting, you must understand your value proposition. What is the thing that your customers' value from your organization. What do they need, really need, in their terms, not yours. If they were paying you, what would they want to pay for? I'll give an example to consider: Consider an Internal Training Development Team. They might say that the customer needs good quality training content, jazzy graphics, and slick animations to keep people interested. If we were to ask the customer, they would probably say that what they need are to have their people's skills enhanced so they can be more effective at their jobs. If you consider what the customer really values, you can imagine that the outcome might be very different.

Lean is not just for the shop floor anymore. Lean is universal, it applies to any process. Not every lean tool will apply in every situation but the overall lean principles of reducing non-value added activity, enhancing value added process steps, doing only those things that enhance value for the customer, making only what is needed by the customer, and continually striving to improve apply universally to all business situations.

Keeping Leadership Invested in the Change

How do some leaders who were champions for change become entrenched in the system? People change, but an interesting thing happens sometimes as people change. Sometimes you can measure a person's tenure in their role by the shift in their attitude and behavior about changing the culture. When new to the organization, there is little risk in standing up and saying something is wrong and needs to be fixed. Little risk because its not their mess they are pointing out, and they get to show leadership by pointing out the mess. As they grow more comfortable in their skin however, a change occurs, where they gradually become less connected to the dynamic change that is occurring and more invested in the status quo because they now have ownership for the system and to point out the messes would be self-incriminating.

So the question; How do we help leaders stay passionate about the change and see that there is still more to do, that we have indeed NOT arrived?

I think about my own experiences in leadership. I'm kind of a different sort of person when it comes to leadership. I think leadership is about working to create a vision that everyone can rally around, but I also think leadership is as much about helping people make the vision happen. I view it as one of my primary responsibilities as a leader of people to help my people be successful. In the book The Recipe for Simple Business Improvement by David W. Till, I found an interesting list of characteristics of leaders. Let me share them here;

Leadership:


1. Setting Strategic Direction: Setting the mission and vision that will guide the organization.

2. Aligning the People: Communicating the strategic direction and getting commitment.

3. Motivating and Inspiring: Initiating and gaining momentum to moving the organization forward and overcome barriers.

4. Producing Change: Initiating change the make the organization better.

So from that little list I hone in on the last bullet. Producing Change. That's an action. That means get involved, start to push the wheel around, get others to help but you get in there and help too. The other part of that bullet that interests me is the part about making the organization better. I'm sure everyone shares a similar goal, we all want our organizations to improve. Then why is that some don't improve? In my opinion, leadership is the primary cause. Leadership is a pretty broad topic to assign all the blame to and I certainly don't assign all blame to leadership. The leadership imperative to produce change implies that the direction of change must be something that the leader is bought into and supports. The leader must believe in the change in order to initiate change. If that commitment is not present, the change initiative will ultimately fail. Another significant issue for success of a change intiative is participation. Leaders initiate the change. Looking at bullets 3 and 4 shows that leaders are also active in the change, not passive sideline players. People are smart enough to recognize when real commitment is not present.

In the groundbreaking book Good To Great Jim Collins describes one of the key elements of success of good companies that became great companies as the "Stockdale Paradox". Briefly, the Stockdale Paradox is named for the late Admiral James Stockdale, who was Ross Perot's VP running mate in 1992 and before that was a prisoner of war in Vietnam. When interviewed about how he managed to survive a long captivity in the Hanoi Hilton, Admiral Stockdale credited two paradoxical viewpoints. First, was an undying optimism that he would survive. This was tempered with a dose of reality that he would not be free any time soon. Of additional interest in the interview with Admiral Stockdale was that those fellow POW's that had an overly optimistic view, not founded in reality, suffered more defeatist attitudes when their freedom did not come when they thought it would. He believed that his fellow POW's with rose colored glasses died of broken hearts. Mr. Collins found the Stockdale paradoxical characteristics in the leaders of good to great companies. The ability to see the present situation for what it is, along with a high degree of confidence in the future of the company. Over time leaders run the risk of becoming managers if they can not keep themselves tuned into the realities of the present situation. For clarity, lets review the roles of management from The Recipe for Simple Business Inprovement that I mentioned earlier;

Management:

1. Planning and Budgeting: Setting goals, targets, and timetables for the organization.

2. Organizing and Staffing: Develop the organization structure, positions, and roles to meet the budget.

3. Controlling and Problem Solving: Monitoring compliance to the plan and intervening when needed to keep the plan on track.

4. Maintaining predictability: Keeping the ship as steady as possible and preventing change in those areas where it is not beneficial.

Sounds a little less exciting doesn't it? Those who were once leaders run the risk of becoming managers by insulating themselves from what's really happening. This happens a number of different ways, but one that I have seen is the yes man. The leader comes to the organization and is the "new sheriff in town". He or she is kickin @#%$ and taking names to establish a reputation. After a while some personnel change decisions need to be made and the leader choses the clone or, thinking that they are doing the right thing by bringing in different perspectives, brings in people who don't have the same value set for the program(s) being led. I call them the anti-clones. The clones are easy to spot, they are the ones who dress, speak, and act like the leader. The anti-clones are a little more difficult to deal with because they want to belong too so they will say and do the right things in front of the leader, but left to their own devices, they think you're wasting your time with this initiative. They don't lead, they manage, they don't help push the wheel, they cheer from the sideline when the right people are looking, but sit down when no one is watching.

Meanwhile, back at the top, the former leader does nothing to actually see for themselves whats going on and believes everything they are told. They start to believe they have arrived. They are no longer leading, just managing. The speed of the wheel starts to slow because key people aren't helping to push it around. Pretty soon, that commitment we talked about earlier from point 2 on leadership becomes less clear, no one is clearly communicating and getting commitment to push the initiative. As commitment and direction are lost, so is momentum. So how is the leader to re-establish or maintain their fresh perspective, their urgency for the change?

One of my personal values as a leader is to seek out those that will tell me the truth. I love it when someone tells me that something I have done is a bonehead move and why, because I get to learn. I value and respect those people more than any others because it is through them that I become a better, smarter leader. If you want to avoid becoming a manager and stay a leader, get out of your office and go talk to people who will tell you the truth. Interesting thing about the truth, it's different depending on who's talking. Seek out the real truth, find it where it lives and tap into it. Chances are, that is not in a conference room.

Excerpts on Leadership and Management from "The Recipe for Simple Business Improvement" by David W. Till. 2004, American Society for Quality, Quality Press

Its on my reading list on Linked-In, check it out.

Creating an Organization-Wide Continuous Improvement Culture (Part 2)

In Part 1 we discussed the realization that a CI program of some sort is needed and that the two most important things to consider are the level of commitment that you have and the expected outcomes for the business. In this section we will discuss detailed planning to achieve the vision, training & execution, marketing your success and promoting the right behaviors and skills (otherwise known as feeding the beast).

Detailed Planning: There are a thousand little things to consider here. Many depend on what approach you settle on. Who will do your training? Will you certify your internal people? To what standard will they be certified? How will you communicate internally about progress and the program? How will you handle the negative backlash to change? What fears are most likely to rise up? All of these question will need to be addressed in a detailed way, pretty much up front. Some might wait until later, but if you imagine yourself as wildly successful, you will soon be faced with these issues, better to start thinking about them now.

Training: Depending on the program you've chosen, there are a wealth of resources out there to help accomplish this task. When engaging with someone to help you with training and even with program development, remember, you are in the drivers seat. Do your homework so you can engage the consultant and they can help you craft a program that meets your organizations needs, not theirs.

Execute, execute, execute: Once the detailed planning is drafted and the training is underway, its now time to execute. This is, by far, the most important part of any culture change activity. This is where credibility is built. This is the part where skeptics can become supporters and even passionate believers in what you do. The old saying "the proof is in the putting" is appropriate here. Early success is key to building credibility, so chose what problems to tackle wisely. Remember that you are dealing with high performing people but they have little to no experience with this new set of tools. Mistakes will be made, projects will fail, it happens so don't set someone up with a too complex problem as their first opportunity. At the same time, you want the problem to be real and easily recognizable by all as a problem worth fixing

Market your success: Once you start to have some solid success, start marketing. This part is underrated by many (including me early on) but marketing the successes will help create momentum for the initiative. You'll be able to recognize when you have momentum when you no longer have to recruit people into the initiative, but they seek you out to lobby you to allow them to participate. How to market depends on the company culture. I've used "Six Sigma Fairs", project presentations, billboard and email announcements, and testimonials to varying degrees of success. Try lots of things and stick to what you find works.

Promote the right behaviors: One of the most important things to consider upfront is how you will feed the beast in the future. Most CI Initiatives require some intentional turnover to be viewed as beneficial and viable. The challenge here is what to do with the people that have the new skills required to be effective CI leaders. The best thing to do is promote them into positions of leadership. If the program is truely valuable to the company, those skills will be valued in leadership roles as well. There is an added benefit of showing the organization how important the initiative is to the company's success, and that participation is a possible path to promotion.

Creating an Organization-Wide Continuous Improvement Culture (Part 1)

Want to improve your business situation? Regardless of the reasons why, a recognized need to improve the performance of your business is all that is needed to get the ball rolling. Once the decision is made, however, several questions immediately come to mind. Which approach? How do we start? How many people will this take? What do I expect to get from this? In my experience, it really does not matter which approach you chose. You can chose Six Sigma, Lean, Baldrige, ISO, PDCA, or any of the other latest fads in continuous improvement methods. With the right attitude and commitment, any of these approaches can be successful.

There are proponents of each of the previously mentioned methods, true believers in Six Sigma abound. Fervent advocates of lean are also out there in force. Many companies in the US have used the Baldrige criteria to improve and achieve excellence. ISO requirements for improvement have been ingrained since the standards were developed. Go to a conference and you will find all of these adherents out in force, preaching the gospel of their particular flavor of Continuous Improvement and telling anyone who will listen that THEIR flavor, can save the world and what the shortcomings of all of the other approaches are. So, which to choose? Answering this question starts with another question. What is your organizations culture and what are its big problems? If your organization is already highly disciplined and the perceived problems are with efficiency, lean may be the way to go. If you’re organization is very entrepreneurial, with no appreciation for process discipline, maybe start with ISO or Baldrige requirements. If you’re organization has a basic process discipline appreciation, but product quality issues are killing you, six sigma is for you. By the way, you don’t have to choose just one method. The trend in recent years towards combined approaches (Lean Six Sigma) makes sense from the standpoint of wanting to get the most benefit possible.

Since which method is not the most important thing to consider, what is? There are two things that are of paramount importance to the success of a CI initiative; How committed are you, and what is the expected outcome? I can not overstate the importance of top management commitment to the program. Commitment comes in many forms, starting with agreement all the way up to active participation. Real, meaningful management commitment is towards the top end of that spectrum, but don’t worry, you don’t have to do a Black Belt project to demonstrate commitment. What you do have to do though is this; Commit high potential resources, I mean really commit them. Take people out of their current roles and dedicate them to making this culture change happen. Do not take a half step here, don’t create “Part-time” resources because part–time means no time. An important point here is the caliber of people that you commit to the effort. Don’t choose the people that you can “afford” to do without in their current roles. If, while having the resource discussion, a persons’ name comes up whom someone says they can’t live without, that’s the right person to put on the effort. This decision is a reflection back to managements’ commitment. If the people chosen to lead the effort are viewed as expendable, the organization will recognize very quickly that management is not really interested in this initiative and support will wither. The second thing to consider is what do you expect from the program? What’s the big hairy goal that focuses the organizations efforts on this program? Is it winning awards from your customers, is it reducing cost by 50%, is it growing the business significantly? What motivates top management to be interested in this program and the results it achieves? Once you know this you’re ready for the next phase.

Create a crisis. This statement is one way to say that you need to create a vision and a sense of urgency that everyone can easily recognize and understand, to make it easier for people to support and participate. So what is your crisis? Is it competition taking market share, customers firing you, significant product quality costs, significant overhead costs making you less competitive? Clearly define the crisis and communicate it broadly to the entire organization, repeatedly.

Once you have defined the vision, selected an approach or set of approaches to use, determined resources, and communicated the crisis, it time to get to work. Those resource decisions that you made earlier, its time to execute them. Actually take people from their old roles, reassign their old responsibilities to others, move them physically if possible. Now it’s time to think about training.

Next week, we’ll talk about planning for training and helping people to build a detailed vision and plan for culture change and linking that to the crisis. We'll also discuss creating momentum for the inititaive.