Guide to driving transformational change through Lean Six Sigma & Process Excellence.

In our previous article “Process Improvement – Is it about the tools?” Eric suggested that the focus of a deployment should be on desired outcomes rather than tools.  This style of deployment focuses on leveraging multiple tools and customizing them to the realize business result we’re trying to achieve and this is core to our deployments.

Eric summarized some observed challenges that some organizations experience leveraging a tool-based deployment:

1. A focus on finding the “right” problem to fix through a designated methodology as opposed to a business process challenge that needs to be addressed
2. In a few organizations, it has manifested itself into two or more competing deployments focused on different approaches such as Lean or Six Sigma or successive programs due to prior inabilities to deliver meaningful value – contributing to a sense of “flavour of the month”
3. A  narrow focus on a toolkit distracting from the most appropriate path to the desired outcome

The holistic toolkit seeks to address these challenges.

Focus on the Business

When individuals are sent away from training they typically come back energized and armed with new tools to affect change.  There is a desire to apply them immediately and to every challenge that presents itself.  But at the end of the day, attempting to address a business challenge from a tool perspective may be a barrier to addressing the business process challenge the right way.  This is similar for deployments as well.

Within the framework of a particular tool, it can dictate how conversations are conducted with a Sponsor or influence outcomes if the output of the tool doesn’t match the inputs.  By re-vectoring the discussion from approaches to the desired business outcome, we abstract away the details allowing us to strategically apply our arsenal of tools.  When getting from A to B, most just want to get there and place very little importance on how.  They just want it to work and the technical details should be reserved for the experts.  This will also allow you to tailor your messaging to key stakeholders as well by removing complexity.

Strategically apply the tools on your belt

Have you ever walked into a kitchen supply store?  How many tools do you see on the wall?  Colanders, peelers, presses and the list goes on; there’s a special tool for every task.  While we’re not advocating that hundreds tools are required to be successful but certainly a variety to tackle the wide array of business challenges that may need support.

No methodology is perfect when addressing a business problem hence requiring strategic application of them.  Some of the tools in our toolkit includes Appreciative Inquiry, WorkOut, Lean Six Sigma and Process Design where each successive tool addresses a different level of complexity.

Take for example you have two teams that simply won’t come together to work cohesively as a group as the relationship is marred with negativity.  In these cases, we may use Appreciative Inquiry and WorkOut to help people build relationships and leverage positive stories to identify themes that form the basis of new solutions.

In other scenarios, we’ve worked with teams that are culturally open to process improvement but aren’t quite ready for methodologies such as Lean Six Sigma.  In this case, we’ve incorporated various LSS tools into WorkOut to provide a soft introduction and build the foundation for future metric-centric process improvements.

While each methodology has strengths and weaknesses, it’s possible to marry specific elements of each to realize an even stronger impact on business outcomes.