The Lean Six Sigma Elephant in the Room
February 18th, 2007 by HalI am cautious writing this post. Some people have been calling attention to an elephant in the room. KT Cat is one of those people. I don't know KT Cat. I read his weblog, The Scratching Post. KT writes anonymously. He writes with an attitude. That often makes for good reading. In his recent posting, A Lean Six Sigma Slogan, KT wrote,
"It's better to have your employees wonder if you're a complete idiot than it is to send them to Lean Six Sigma training and remove all doubt."
I think he speaks honestly. I'm not saying I agree with what he says. Nor am I saying that he's saying what is inherently true about Lean Six Sigma. But I do think he speaks from experience.
Change must be led, modelled, and taught from the top of the company. Nothing less works.
KT's experience with Lean Six Sigma, like many others' experience, has apparently been negative. I can imagine that his company, like many companies before, are going down a path that is only superficially taking up Lean Six Sigma. It reminds me of a conversation I heard from a former Big Auto executive. He mentioned that he had asked Dr. Edwards Deming to come work with his managers. Dr. Deming declined. He said that the company wouldn't be ready for what he could teach them until the CEO had fully embraced his quality message and provided necessary leadership. Dr. Deming said it would take the CEO at least six months of working together before he'd be ready to work with others. The CEO declined to meet with Dr. Deming. Eventually, the CEO did meet with Dr. Deming, but it was too late for him to do much work with the auto company. Dr. Deming died shortly thereafter.
Dr. Deming understood something that far too many executives don't understand. Whether it's Lean Six Sigma or any other strategic approach, change must be led, modelled, and taught from the top of the company. Nothing less works. I don't know why KT wrote what he wrote. I hope he writes more. Perhaps KT will help others learn Dr. Deming's lesson.
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February 19th, 2007 at 9:56 am
All I can say is, “Wow.” Thanks for the very kind words.
I knew friends at work read The Scratching Post and we all yuck it up over LSS. It’s particularly hilarious when the head of our parent organization sends out an email to all proclaiming $43,000 of savings attributable to LSS, but not mentioning the cost of implementation, which is in the millions. I had no idea that others were tuning in to confirm their own suspicions.
I’m glad you like my writing. If you want a single post that gets to the heart of the issue, of which LSS is a single instance, try this one.
Passchendaele in the Office
February 19th, 2007 at 12:33 pm
Too much Six Sigma “training” takes the form of putting a bunch of people who work in disparate parts of the company into a room for a week. They do their round of powerpoints, role playing, lunching, and so on. Then they are told, “Thou art a green belt. Go forth and do Six Sigma…” Then the company can brag about how many Six Sigma green belts it has while nothing gets improved. The trainers pocket their fees. Oh, and usually the words “standard deviation” are never mentioned, nor are any other hard core statistical details. So no one even knows where the term “Six Sigma” even comes from. True story.
February 20th, 2007 at 5:00 pm
But does this say something more about mismanagement than Six Sigma? You could train surgeons in a week, send them out and watch them fail, and then cast aspersions on surgery. Would that be right? Farmers know more about creating good conditions for growth than most business managers.
February 23rd, 2007 at 3:27 am
A great comment about Deming. I believe Deming’s writings about Leadership understood that traditional supervisory activities are reactive rather than proactive. Many managers to pay a great deal of attention to reports and data which tell them what happened yesterday, last week, last month, or last year. Often such reports highlight the things that have gone wrong. Deming has compared this to attempting to drive a car by looking only in the rear-view mirror. Because of this, he observed that, “A supervisor is an auditor of failure, while a leader listens and learns, studies and understands and works to improve the system.” He also noted that “One important characteristic of a leader is that he will forgive a mistake - there will be mistakes.” It is therefore clear that Leaders are required to make lean Six Sigma work!
Rob
www.rob-thompson.net
www.63buckets.co.uk (lean blog)
www.qualityhero.co.uk (6sigma blog)
www.linkedin.com/in/robertthompson
February 24th, 2007 at 9:18 am
If you need Leaders (whatever they are) to make a process improvement technique work, then it’s doomed. We have Leaders, and right now, we’ve got the best one we’ve had in decades, hands down. She is very smart, tenacious, visionary, knows exactly what she wants to do, articulates it clearly and has organized her leadership meetings to cut out everything except what is important.
LSS still doesn’t work for us and it’s not even close.
October 2nd, 2007 at 9:51 pm
I know there are too many “quick belts” being handed out, and the problem only gets compounded when you add lean manufacturing principles into a Six Sigma green or black belt course. If an individual is to learn Six Sigma enough to become a black belt, and all lean principles with enough depth to apply in the real world, it would take a several months of education, not to mention the weeks of application.
There are companies that spend several months training in the classroom plus months of working with a few experts prior to handing over a project to the individual.
All companies should be judged on their own, but the quick courses are not helping give the “Lean Six Sigma” practitioner a good name.
There are some good courses out there. The public courses at www.6sigma.us are excellent. We’re partial to our own separate Six Sigma and lean online courses at www.1stcourses.com which take months to complete. We would do them in person but couldn’t charge enough.