Candid Executive dialog about Lean Six Sigma

Per our discussion, my five book series description on the Integrated Enterprise Excellence (IEE), which goes below Lean Six Sigma and the Balanced Scorecard, is described in the following links. I am confident that your organization could benefit a lot from the IEE business management system. Put link to all books and five book series purchase page on website for above.

• The Integrated Enterprise Excellence System: An Enhanced, Unified Approach to Balanced Scorecards, Strategic Planning, and Business Improvement, Forrest W. Breyfogle III, Bridgeway Books, Austin, TX 2008.
• Integrated Enterprise Excellence Volume I – The Basics:  Golfing Buddies Go Beyond Lean Six Sigma and the Balanced Scorecard, Forrest W. Breyfogle III, Bridgeway Books, Austin, TX, 2008
• Integrated Enterprise Excellence Volume II – Business Deployment: A Leaders’ Guide for Going Beyond Lean Six Sigma and the Balanced Scorecard, Bridgeway Books, 2008
• Integrated Enterprise Excellence Volume III – Improvement Project Execution: A Management and Black Belt Guide for Going Beyond Lean Six Sigma and the Balanced Scorecard, Bridgeway Books, 2008
• Lean Six Sigma Project Execution Guide: The Integrated Enterprise Excellence (IEE) Process Improvement Project Roadmap, Forrest W. Breyfogle III, Citius Publishing, Austin, TX, 2010.

To start, suggest that you check out the following sections of the books:

• Strategy discussion – Integrated Enterprise Excellence (IEE) Volume II: pages 232 – 237
• Enterprise value chain discussion – IEE Volume II: pages 195 – 222
• Malcolm Baldrige award – IEE Volume II: pages 223-224
• Creating projects that are aligned to overall business needs – IEE Volume II: page 359 (Note: your current strategies could be put into the strategies column of the Enterprise Improvement Plan (EIP), which should then lead to targeted projects that have process manager ownership)
•  Creation of 30,000-foot-level metrics – IEE Volume III: chapters 12 and 13

I understand that IEE Volume III, because of its 1200+ page size, can look intimidating; however, in my opinion all Lean Six Sigma Black Belts should be able to actively use the tools and follow the project execution roadmap described in this book.  As you said, this is a reference book, which can be used by Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belts to coach and mentor Lean Six Sigma Black Belts and Green Belts long after any training session.

I am taking the liberty of being candid with you.  Please note that I am not trying to be critical, just passing onto you my observations, since I really want you and your organization to be the best it can be.

I learned during my visit that your organization started their Lean Six Sigma journey after the turn of the century and have trained over thousands of people.  It is commendable that your organization has continued with the program for such a long time; however, I observed that your deployment has similar characteristics and issues that other Lean Six Sigma deployments have, which include:

• A large percentage of trained practitioners never complete a project.
• Of the trained practitioners that did complete their project, a vast majority of these people either never complete another project or if they did, it was not documented.
• It is difficult to get process improvement project sponsors.
• Projects often do not impact the big picture.
• There tends to be a “push” for creation projects (looking/brainstorming for improvement projects to undertake), instead of a predictive performance metric improvements need “pulling” for creation of a project, where the process owner is asking/demanding timely completion of an improvement project in their area so that they can meet the performance improvement goals that has been set for them to achieve.
• Often Lean Six Sigma deployments become primarily a training program for certifications.  Lean Six Sigma skills training can help people perform their daily jobs better; however, the benefit from this knowledge transfer is difficult to quantify.  Training that is provided around a book’s structure could be beneficial for future reference; however, organizations often only provide a deck of slides for documentation of their overall process improvement process, which is difficult to later reference.

I have wrestled with the above common-place issues for years.  My conclusion from this is that process improvement efforts need to be truly integrated within an overall business management system where business scorecard improvements needs pull for improvement project creation.  Because of this, I have created the Integrated Enterprise Excellence (IEE) system. One aspect of this IEE system is the creation of predictive scorecards that lead to the right (best) behaviors throughout the organization, on an on-going basis.

However, creation of the IEE system is not trivial.  Also, many will not like the system for one reason or another, including its performance metric accountability. Hence, the simple passing off my books and/or articles for review of concepts will in all likelihood lead to a no-action conclusion, even if the organization could truly benefit from the methodology.

With the current environment that we are facing with the economy, it would be surprising to me that your management is not asking for your organization to do more with less.  If this is the case, then the EIP (page 359 of Volume II) on the left side column should be something like reduce costs and lead times for executing your value stream work.  You would then list your current strategies in the second columns, which should then lead to high potential focus areas for your improvement efforts with value chain performance enhancements accountability.  This then would lead to targeted improvement projects.

As we discussed in my simple commute-to-work illustration, the setting of goals is not going to make process improvement happen.  As noted on the top of page 234 of IEE Volume II, Dr. Lloyd Nelson in Deming’s book stated: “If you can improve productivity, or sales, or quality, or anything else, by (e.g.,) five percent next year without a rational plan for improvement, then why were you not doing it last year?”  To me Nelson’s quote makes a lot of sense; hence, all metric improvement goals need to have a systematic plan for improving the underlying process that created the metric.

What I suggest:

• View a Video: Quality Digest interviewed me on video at the QualityExpo conference where I was speaking.  My interview starts about five minutes into the recording, which can be accessed through the link
• Have me work with some key people in your organization for two and a half days:  In this time frame, I would facilitate the creation of an IEE system for performance measurements and improvement within your organization.  This would include a first-pass creation of an IEE value chain along with developing an EIP. On the morning of the third day, I would give you a summary of the results of this work, with any lessons learned and suggested next step considerations.

What is the risk and reward of me working with your team for the 2 ½ days?

• Worse case on the down side: Your team learned how to create predictive scorecards, decide upon improvement projects to undertake that would positively impact the big picture and other methodologies; however, you decided not to pursue IEE.
• Best case on the positive side: You decided to pursue IEE and gained so much benefit from the methodology that your organization is later benchmarked throughout much of the industry and government for helping our country address the problems of the day.

I am sure that you will agree that the above positive side is “somewhat” optimistic; however, because the downside risks are so small, it seems to me that you do not have much to lose by taking me up on my offer.  If nothing else, you have the opportunity of creating a long-lasting system in your organization that provides more efficient utilization of its resources in armament research, development and engineering.

I am looking forward to discussing this proposal further with you.  Hopefully you will take me up on my offer.

Related articles

• Lean Six Sigma Process Improvement Infrastructure (smartersolutions.com)
• Six Sigma level metric, issues and resolution (smartersolutions.com)
• Starting process improvement project in a company (smartersolutions.com)
• KPI (Key Performance Indicator) Selection (smartersolutions.com)
• How to turn a company around from financial problems to success (smartersolutions.com)