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Managing Risk: Where Six Sigma Implementations Get Stuck

Six Sigma initiatives are only as effective as the people charged with their implementation. In his book, Six Sigma Team Dynamics: The Elusive Key to Project Success, Gary Eckes demonstrates that, "the majority of the time when [Six Sigma] project teams fail, the root cause is poor team dynamics." The critical role of individual accountability and interpersonal effectiveness in Six Sigma initiatives, however, is easy to overlook. Focused on the numbers, defects, and statistical process control (SPC) at the heart of Six Sigma, deployment leaders can easily lose sight of the fact that the success of Six Sigma implementation ultimately depends on how effectively individuals within an organization are able to hold each other accountable, identify victim behaviors, and effectively manage change.

Critical areas of accountability based deployment include:

• Clarify Role of the Leader
• Capacity to engage in and own the process
• Creating ownership and involvement across the organization while empowering key resources (MBBs)
• Scoping realistic and significant projects
   
• Breaking the Cycle of Blame
• Creating a process of individual and shared accountability
• Encouraging and acting upon meaningful contributions from impacted players
• Preparing for and managing inevitable conflicts and misunderstandings
   
• Proactive Recovery
• How to get a project back on track
• Protecting the relationship when things go amiss
• Clarify roles, rights, and responsibilities to redefined outcomes

How to Get There: A Four Phase Approach to Ensuring Accountable Six Sigma Deployment

The key to successful Six Sigma implementation lies not just in basic Six Sigma training for Black Belts and Green Belts, but in a solid set of tools that employees can use to effectively handle the challenges of collaboration inherent to any large-scale change initiative. Six Sigma leaders, Master Black Belts, Black Belts, and project members all need to be able communicate constructively, explore and express divergent perspectives, and resolve conflict in a way that keeps team members engaged and motivated.

Phase 1: Gain Leadership Alignment
The benefits of an effective Six Sigma program can easily be sabotaged by leaders who are fragmented, in silos, and pursuing conflicting priorities. It is necessary to gain alignment of all leaders to support the identified top priorities and initiatives of an organization where the organization's well being supersedes any individual leader's span of control. Ultimately, the practice and skill of developing "shared accountability" amongst leaders to ensure they are all supporting the top initiatives of the organization is essential to success.

Phase 2: Translate Process Improvement into Performance Execution
While Six Sigma leaders, Master Belts, Black Belts, and project managers are identifying ways to improve internal processes and systems, ultimate success for an organization doesn't manifest until performance execution is addressed. Performance execution represents the "link between people to achieve business outcomes." Of course, this link is partially controlled by the processes they employ, which is improved by successful Six Sigma programs. However, the other aspect of performance execution that needs to be handled are the "dysfunctional cultural habits" that are a part of any organization. These "habits of performance execution" may include:

• Not addressing poor performance
• Breakdowns in cross-functional coordination impacting projects and deliverables
• Decision making which isn't timely or doesn't consider the impact on multiple areas
• Poor tracking and measuring of projects and deliverables
• Functional areas that are not developing their talent pool to support cross-functional effectiveness and succession planning

It is essential to develop success factors of performance execution that re-develop the habits in the culture to support the Six Sigma process improvements. These success factors of performance execution are linked to business deliverables and priorities and enhance the implementation of changes initiated by Six Sigma efforts. They are measured and tracked giving the organization an on-going sense of overall performance related to achieving business success.

Phase 3: Develop Agreements to Create Accountable Relationships
While relationships are considered the "soft side" of business, unaddressed conflicts, poor communication and information sharing, and ineffective meetings waste millions of dollars in time, resources, and project overruns. The most streamlined processes can be instantly sabotaged by leaders and team members who operate with complete autonomy to "run their personal agenda" at the cost of their team and the organization. This could impact hiding information, not including others when making decisions, and not cooperating with agreed upon change efforts, business priorities, or the sharing of resources. In addition, when agreements aren't established conflicts go unresolved furthering the gap between departments, teams, and individuals.

Developing accountable agreements between departments and key influencers is key in assuring that all parties understand their roles, rights, responsibilities, and processes for addressing conflicts, surfacing and resolving problems, and making decisions that impact each other. Creating accountable agreements isn't for the purpose of having everyone "get along," but for the direct impact on performance execution and achieving business deliverables. Accountable agreements dictate how meetings should be run to stay meaningful, purposeful, and on-track for ensuring progress on performance indicators. Accountable agreements ensure the organization operates with a high level of trust, respect, and effective communication to achieve business goals.

Phase 4: The Skill of Holding Others Accountable
Finally, Six Sigma leaders, Master Belts, and Black Belts must have the authority and skill to hold others accountable while teaching that skill to others in their organization. Whether implementing new processes, improving performance execution or supporting established accountable agreements the ability to hold others accountable in a supportive manner that focuses on accountable behaviors and performance is essential for ensuring success. Everyone at some point in time will break an agreement. However, the ability to recover from that breakdown in as short a time as possible is what separates the mediocre organization from the high performing organization. How do people at all levels hold others accountable without moving to a "blame game" approach that ultimately undermines innovation and risk taking to improve results? How do we hold others accountable who are not a direct report, but either a colleague or an upper level of management? Developing the skill of holding others accountable is essential for the high performing organization.

Six Sigma: Progressing to the Next Level of Influence and Success

Six Sigma represents one of the most successful efforts in improving organizational performance that has existed. However, as organizations begin to experience the limitations of Six Sigma it provides an opportunity for the leaders of Six Sigma to look beyond organizational processes to impacting performance execution and behavior change linked to performance results. One might ask, "Why isn't accountable performance and behavior change the role of human resources or organization development?" Certainly, integrating those areas of knowledge can be essential, but the unique skills of Master Belts and Black Belts to measure and link processes to business results are essential for ensuring that behavior change and performance execution remain focused on achieving business results. Finally, if Six Sigma does not build their skills in accountable performance improvement, they may find their improvements at risk in terms of achieving sustainable results.

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