Nov
7
People and Processes
Filed Under Human Architecture, Leadership, Lean Enterprise, Six Sigma, Strategy Execution | Leave a Comment
These are interesting times we live in.
An economic crisis bigger than any in my lifetime.
Job losses in the US at catastrophic levels and it’s even worse in areas dependent on the US Big 3 automakers. Reports of GM buying all or part of Chrysler and the cascading effect on employment. Optimistic views talk in terms of 30,000 displaced in the metro Detroit area. Some reports say it will be 124,000. I think it is like what we have seen with the bank and credit crisis, it will be worse than current projections. GM announced just in the last few minutes that they will lay off 30% of their work force and stop funding 401K’s.
How are companies responding to this? They have stopped spending money. They are looking for cost savings in 2009. This will mean more job loss and it will mean many okay processes will be broken.
It is a time of hope and opportunity.
At a macro level in the US, it is the presidency of Barrack Obama. Many, many are willing to take the risk that he is real and that he can move us out of these troubled waters.
On a smaller level, many companies can use this time to redefine and reinvent themselves. Some companies get the opportunity of high risk investment by the government, some get the opportunity to take advantage of grants for business development in areas like alternative energy.
On a personal level, if you have been displaced in banking or the auto industry, it is a reasonable assumption you will not be going back to your old job. The opportunity is to learn new skills, to go into new industries, or maybe to start your own business.
What is the role of people who have dedicated their life to teaching, mentoring, and making companies processes better?
I think there are three distinct areas in which we should play –
1) For those displaced and looking for new skills, we should help find the grants and teach them new skills. This is not confined to training as Lean Masters or Six Sigma “belts”, but how about things like taking the person who has been working in Quality and has been taught the “real world” approach and getting them certified as a Quality and/or Reliability Engineer?
2) For companies that are in survival mode, we should go in and help them make quick gains by leading the improvement projects. Many companies will not be worried about training their internal resources in 2009, it is hard to think that way if you don’t know if you will be in business in 2010. I will offer a company gains on a focused project in one month or they do not owe me any money. They just have to commit the time and team on their end.
3) On the companies in the emerging sectors, they will be making the transition from startup to fulfillment. Many companies struggle with that. They also will not see clearly how to go to the outside for help since they have limited resources. Again grant money will need to be found, but we can go in and teach them to set up an efficient business system that can comply with things like ISO 9000 or 14001. We can go in and help set up their processes to flow and we can teach them best in class methods to run their processes with efficiency, effectiveness, and responsiveness.
How does this impact the traditional Lean Six Sigma consulting model?
In short, I think the model is dead.
Few companies will go for the idea of adding infrastructure and diverting 1% – 5% of their resources. Of those that have been doing it, many will pull back. For what it is worth, the original model had process improvement being everyone’s job where everyone got trained.
Does the focused full time model have merits? Of course, especially where is an apprenticeship every professional serves as they transition into a company or as we transition from professional to manager. But the idea of setting aside a significant portion of a scant resource in 2009/10 – companies will be running away from this idea in mass.
What is the new role?
The new role is the ability to give companies very focused help on people and processes.
People – two factors here, knowledge and behavior. Both can be assessed fairly succinctly. Companies will need to know if the remaining people in their enterprise are right people in the right jobs.
Processes – Are they efficient and effective at least with respect to their competition? If they are not, how do we offer to make significant gains in a very short amount of time.
This means we need new skills with respect to people and we need to be people who know how to really do what we have been teaching.
My opinion.
Gary
A special thanks to my friend and mentor, Elmano Nigri, of Arquitetura Humana in Sao Paulo, Brasil for helping me talk through this.
Apr
29
Out of the mouth of babes
Filed Under Human Architecture, Lean Enterprise, Six Sigma, Strategy Execution | Leave a Comment
I am putting this out there for the entertainment of some of the long time practitioners - sometimes you get something communicated to you that just makes what we do worth it.
From Ernesto Garcia’s and my good friend Patti who works in Treasury at her company -
Interesting…. here are my 2 cents worth on my thinking about Six Sigma / Lean. I will preface by admitting that I am still a rookie at this stuff compared to a “godfather” such as you but having seen the evolution at (name deleted to protect the guilty) and now being in another company who uses Lean/Six Sigma, I have boiled down what I think are the critical success factors and what, conversely, can lead to failure. I agree that labels and silver bullets won’t work…. the bottom line is problem solving, change and process improvement.
To succeed:
1. Do not ignore that this is a culture. Involvement of every individual is critical. Not all people in the organization will be the problem solvers but everyone can shed light on where the trouble spots are, have great process knowledge and, if asked, often have great ideas for change.
2. Do not treat Six Sigma or Lean as an exercise. Do not allow the “belts” to conduct data gathering sessions or process discussions and then leave the process owners without providing any feedback or evidence of what happens next.
3. Pay attention to the control phase. What is the action plan? What are the countermeasures needed should the process indicate slippage to prior state?
4. Make it fun. Use real-world examples. De-emphasize the statistical aspects unless your audience is going to actually use that information. Lots of people don’t like “math”…. go figure! (pun intended)
5. All leadership must understand and embrace the concepts. It’s even better if they believe it.
6. Don’t make it about the size of the project, i.e. the $$$$$. Lots of little projects and small successes add up to benefiting the organization plus they build confidence and momentum amongst the members of the organization.
7. Make it ok to use tools as needed without having to do a whole “project”. Get people thinking about using process maps, fishbones or FMEA’s, for example, in meetings to help focus on the problem and instill some discipline to the discussion. Additionally, make the quest for appropriate data gathering and insightful questioning routine. Do not gather data or use tools just for the sake of it.
8. Make sure your “belts” are equipped to be the teachers and change agents that you need them to be. Focus on their strengths…. not all should be classroom trainers, for example, but should all be capable of transferring the knowledge to the rest of their organization. Assess soft skills when deciding whom to send to training and provide coaching, training and mentoring on those skills to those who are seeking certification. Find a way to “grade” the soft skills as part of the certification or review process. It’s about marketing once these “disciples” are set loose into the organization.
On the surface, this seems pretty simple but it also seems to be overlooked from my observations and discussions with people who have been doing this for a while…. kind of common sense if you ask me. Ask anyone…who doesn’t want to “make his or her world a better place?”
Patti, for what’s it worth. I’ll bet you just made a friend of some old friends of mine. Specifically Mike Carnell.
Well said.
Gary
Apr
28
Lean Six Sigma
Filed Under Lean Enterprise, Six Sigma | Leave a Comment
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.
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.
How does an implementation look like if you don’t just hit the ground running with Six Sigma? Simple -
- Take and honest look at yourself and define who you are and who you need to be.
- Align strategy and annual planning with the honest view of you.
- Define the few metrics, besides financials, that show that we are making progress or not.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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)
- Charter and plan projects (preferably as part of next years operating plan).
- 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. Just know that I believe that the advice that a good change agent is a good manager is terrible advice.
- 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.
- 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).
- 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.
- Repeat.
As anyone knows that has done this successfully, there is overlap between all of this.
Don’t go deciding Lean, Six Sigma, or Lean Six Sigma is the answer until you have defined clearly where the opportunity is.
First things first.
Gary
Apr
28
The Champion
Filed Under Six Sigma | Leave a Comment
Another from a few years ago. It’s still good.
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.