Qualtec's Business Performance Improvement Blog

The last few years have witnessed big changes in the business climate, and continuous improvement (CI) efforts have certainly seen their share of change.   I talk with companies every day and, without a doubt, there has been a fundamental shift in thought on how to best make meaningful process improvement happen.

Prior to 2008, there was significant interest and buy-in for large-scale, top-down initiatives. There was a willingness to set aside large budgets and free up significant resources for the CI initiative.   Training increasingly large segments of the workforce was front and center.  Detailed, multi-year plans were put in place.   The CI initiative was heavily promoted, internally and externally, and employees were strongly urged to participate.

But, did those big initiatives deliver results?   Undoubtedly some did.  But, many more, when you really check the numbers, did not.  There are many distinct causes why they didn’t work, and I won’t try to dive into that here.    But, with the meltdown in the business climate, many leaders took a look in the rear view mirror and didn’t like what they saw …. big dollars and resources consumed with little evidence of concrete results.

Now, does this mean that CI and process improvement is useless and should be abandoned?  Of course not.  Businesses live and die today based on the strength and adaptiveness of their processes, as compared to their competitors.  Does it mean that the tools and methodologies used (Lean, Six Sigma, BPM, etc) are not good and should be replaced with something new?   I think not.  The tools and methodologies can certainly be improved and expanded (and are), but they are proven to work.

So what’s happened?  I believe that, for a lot of companies, there was too much focus on the initiative and not nearly enough focus on results. And based on conversations I have with business leaders every day, I think many have drawn the same conclusion.

So, when smart people see the error in their ways, it typically leads to change.  The change that I’ve seen happen for CI is a move back to the basics, and a focus on bottomline, business results.  It may return, but for now I see very little interest in big change initiatives whose results are measured over the very long term, if ever truly measured.  I see a much more tactical view of CI, focusing on solving specific business problems quickly,  as opposed to general quality improvement.  CI programs are more likely to be looked at from a bottom-up or grass-roots perspective.

Smart leaders are now letting the specific needs of their business drive what the CI program looks like, what methodologies and tools are applied, how results get measured, what technology platforms are deployed, etc.  To borrow from Lean, the business is pulling CI capability, as opposed to it being pushed into the business.  In the real world, what does this mean?

a short executive brief that provides a good overview of the basics of lean

Well, I can only give you my perspective from talking with leaders at companies of all sizes and in many different domains, but what I see is a clear move back to the basics of business and process improvement.  Basic quality and process tools as employed in Business Process Management (BPM), Lean, and basic quality tools (Yellow Belt) are getting a second look.

Why?  Because, for many businesses, the basics will help solve 95% of the real business problems, get results fast, and they can be introduced into the organization for a very low cost and very low risk.  The basics also build a solid foundation on which advanced capabilities like Six Sigma and DFSS can be effectively built and deployed to deliver even more dramatic business results, with much less risk.

So, what do you think?  Is this just a reaction to circumstances and will large-scale, top down change initiatives return.   OR,   is this the new normal for companies when it comes to business and process improvement? Feel free to  Contact me if you’d like to discuss.

So, what does Business Process Management (BPM) mean to you if your organization has already gone headstrong into lean,  six sigma or other improvement efforts?    What does it mean to you if the efforts have really produced some good results?  Think you don’t need it and should move on?   You may want to think again ….

I constantly talk with people and hear some variation of ….

“We got a lot of great results from our program (Lean, Six Sigma, Quality, CI, etc) for the first couple years, everyone was excited and motivated, but now the program seems to be running out of steam.  Results and participation are falling, interest in waning, and we can’t figure out why”.

There are, of course, many potential causes for this, but one of them seems to be pretty consistent.  There is no real project pipeline and project prioritization approach. What happens?  People don’t really know what to work on so they don’t do anything or, maybe worse, they start working on squeaky wheel projects that have little or no impact on the business, and may even have a negative impact.  If this happens, I can assure you that it is a recipe for disaster for any business improvement program.

Download our whitepaper that discusses using BPM and scorecards to align improvement efforts

If you build that BPM framework, you will have a clear view of what really matters to the business and metrics to gauge your success in improving those things.  A pipeline of business cases and projects can be built based on measurable performance gaps and those projects will, by definition, have clear line of sight to things that really matter.  A clear prioritization scheme then keeps things practical and real.

If you have a clear list of projects that are absolutely aligned with the things that matter most to the business and you have a way to prioritize improvement efforts, do you think an improvement program is likely to fizzle?   I think not.

So, give BPM a second look, even if you’re well into an improvement program.  It doesn’t have to be a complicated, drawn out task.  If you’re just getting started, you can and should build it in stages, while you’re picking up some of those low hanging fruit projects.   If you have a mature effort, you can still build it in manageable stages by prioritizing the different areas of the business.  In the medium to long run, it might be the difference between your improvement program being a flavor of the month initiative and a long-term, strategic value-add component of the way you do business.

Contact me if you’d like to discuss BPM and your organization in more detail.

It sounds so simple. Lean eliminates waste defined as any activity that does not provide value to the customer. Eliminate the waste and you will bring products and services to customers better, faster and at a lower price. Finally, combine it with Six Sigma to reduce variation and defects, and you make breakthrough results.

We all start by understanding that value is defined solely by what the customer actually desires and for which they are willing to pay and that value enabling activities, while not adding direct value, are necessary. We all then look for the true non-value added activities that add waste in the form of unnecessary time, effort or cost. We learn to seek and eliminate those non-value added activities.  That is the essence of a lean project.

So what is the lynchpin that makes this elegant equation work? Identify what your customer considers of value and how you deliver it. Once you have that line of site, if you maintain efforts to continually improve, you’ll get there. But without that clarity, your improvement efforts are a march to nowhere.

It is important when developing that line of sight to define value from the perspective of the customer, the Voice of the Customer (VOC). Understand clearly and exactly what product or service the customer desires, when it is to be delivered, and at what price.

Download a training module dealing with Critical to Customer Requirements, a key element of VOC

To understand how your company actually delivers what the customer considers of value, leverage lean tools to precisely map the set and sequence of all specific actions done to bring the product or service from conception to final delivery. This provides a visual display of exactly how a particular process is carried out. Mapping this “value stream” enables you to identify value-adding and non-value adding activities from the customer’s perspective thus setting the stage for improvement.

Along with providing a sense of alignment between your goal of delivering value and your opportunity for improvement, this exercise also carries the message of how problems and solutions are cross-functional in nature. If process owners participate in this process with an open mind, they will learn the futility of looking for a solution from someone else independent of their efforts. Thus, not only does value stream mapping provide alignment from the customer to performance improvement opportunities, but it continues through to an individual’s actions.

Yes it can be a simple equation – understand what your customer values (VOC), eliminate waste (Lean) and be more competitive. But to do that, make sure you get the front end right using VOC and value stream mapping to get the target and alignment to individual actions.

Feel free to contact me if you’d like to discuss ….

Outwit…Outplay…Outlast.  Wow, that says it all doesn’t it?  Reality TV is a kick. Throw a bunch of strangers onto an island and watch them dwindle down based on how well they can play to the desires of a group in a winner-take-all battle. Lots to learn from watching. How well and quickly can a player understand the group’s requirements? How well can they meet those requirements in a highly competitive situation? Each elimination changes the group’s dymanics so the requirements, competition and strategy all have to be adapted continuously and quickly. One slip up and you could be out. How does this relate to Service Industries?

 our critical to customer requirements VOC module

In previous articles, I’ve discussed how business and consumer patterns have gone through massive changes and how understanding the Voice of the Customer is the key to adapting to the new environment. The nascent recovery is providing an opportunity to survive and, for some businesses, to flourish. But the competition is still in the elimination phase and I believe that is very much the case for service businesses of nearly every nature.

It’s important to understand why things are different in services so as not to be lulled by more macroeconomic headlines. Before the crises, manufacturing went through years of driving productivity while services accelerated right up to the edge. The Federal Reserve’s strategy of depreciating the dollar and growing demand in emerging markets has helped the global competitive position and demand for manufacturing products while services are more tied to the domestic economy. Finally, we have a political environment that ramped regulation or restructured entire service industries such as banking and health care. And if that weren’t enough, services are going to be the start-ups of all the unemployed as they require less capital and can use the internet to gather and distribute information, the very essence of a services business, at a very low cost.

Change is not over in service businesses. Like Survivor, listening and adapting quickly to an ever changing customer is still the only protection from elimination. Several key points we consider imperative to driving alignment are:

1. However you capture VOC, keep improving it. We propose a five level maturity model that goes from what you need to simply stay alive to what you need to be innovative.
2. Balance how you respond to VOC with how you respond to other stakeholder demands. We have a checklist of behaviors that will give you the ammunition to point to an imbalance.
3. Segment your VOC. Meeting every item your customer sets out for you will not yield a purchase while some will yield tremendous results. We offer a framework for segmentation.
4. Convert what you hear to something you can measure. To make science out of art we use industry case studies and benchmarking as the best guide.
5. Align process metrics to the chosen customer measures in #4 above. Again, use industry benchmarking and cases to apply knowledge and experience and avoid the alchemy.

Now you are ready to drive change. But there is one more thing. Let’s return to the scenario painted at the start of this article…it’s not enough to just do this. You must do it fast. We are rebounding but demand for services isn’t returning to 2006 levels…at least not until around 2016…and competition is increasing. During that time, businesses will fail, be acquired or be rationalized. But there will also be winners and, like Survivor, they will win big. We urge you to recognize what is coming and act.  Outwit…Outplay…Outlast. 

If any of the pieces above would help you, let me know our thoughts.

Your company’s or business unit’s results are ticking up. Many of your processes need improvement to deal with the increased activity layered on a rationalized capability. But your pre-recession centralized group was taken away with the tide or one never existed. And your organization is still holding a lid on any personnel additions as it finally enjoys the fruits of painful decisions and remains concerned about the myriad of external factors threatening a nascent recovery. You are left wondering how to unravel Gordian’s Knot. The Alexandrian solution is to build a self-sustaining model that integrates CI into every day activities.

We propose three elements to a self sustaining model which are as follows:

• Find True North. What is it that your organization needs the most? Is your organization looking to solve a customer matter? Must your organization continue to find efficiencies to remain competitive? Whatever it is, find it and stay on it by making it visible and clear to everyone. The reason is simple. Organizations often used a centralized CI program to push improvement efforts. If you find True North, you won’t have to push improvement efforts. They will be pulled.
• Keep it simple. As you look to take on improvement activities, keep the challenges simple. Use basic tools and techniques to knock down the easy barriers and drive a “pay-as-you-go” model that yields traction. Often a centralized improvement group is there to maintain momentum. Our discussion here isn’t against a centralized effort as much as it is against having to wait for one before you can move forward. We’d argue that as successes and improvements yield returns, go back to a funded centralized improvement effort to take on the chronic, cross-functional challenges that require a higher level of expertise, full time devotion, cross functional latitude and can power through momentum killing barriers. But for now, avoid making momentum a challenge.
• Integrate rewards. If you want it to be broad based, make the rewards broad based and commensurate with the effort. Members of centralized groups are motivated to drive improvement because they have skin in the game. They pursue significant improvement, are measured on achieving it and rewarded if they accomplish their goals. Is it any wonder they are focused on improvement? To get broad efforts to yield results, take a broad view of rewarding success. Now we aren’t saying to weight such reward systems such that everyone becomes an improvement professional. The reward should match the effort and return.

our whitepaper that discusses using BPM and scorecards to align improvement efforts

Every day we talk to people in all functional areas of organizations wrestling with the question of how to move their effectiveness and efficiency forward in the new environment. They see feel the pain and see the potential reward. But they are frustrated that they don’t have a centralized group which to call and ask for help. They feel locked in place unable to move forward.

Our advice is to find a different solution than what you have considered to be “normal” in the past. Let your organization’s mission pull activity. Pursue simple, well targeted improvements that provide their own momentum. Integrate a broad based reward system that recognizes peoples’ accomplishments on a level commensurate with their efforts. Cut the knot! 

If you would like to discuss these ideas, feel free to contact me.

As I have said in a number of previous articles, Continuous improvement (CI) seems to be coming back in vogue after a couple of years where CI programs were severely cut back or outright eliminated.  Service and service delivery organizations that paid scant attention to structured business and process improvement are now taking notice.  Why? 

our BPM Overview Presentation

Well, the simple answer is that things are just different now.  I talk to business leaders every day, and I can’t tell you the last time I heard “we want to start a continuous improvement (or Lean or Six Sigma program, etc) to instill a culture of quality and continuous process improvement in the company”. Overwhelmingly, my conversations say it’s all about solving specific business problems, immediately and relatively inexpensively.   And, services and service delivery organizations are who I’m talking to.

Problems seem to cluster around being able to deliver an increasing service level while maintaining or growing margins, WITHOUT adding headcount.   It’s do more with less (or at least with what we have).  My limited insight doesn’t bode well for the near-term employment outlook, but it’s what I see nonetheless.

So, the reasons for doing it are different than they were just 2 years ago.  The way business leaders want to do CI is also different.  There is very little appetite for big dollar corporate initiatives. The focus is almost entirely on quick wins … results now.   Now, the Six Sigma purists out there might say that a focus on near term results is a recipe for disaster.  I don’t think so.  We have to live in the real world, and if some basic infrastructure components are put in place, you can focus on short term wins and still get sustainable results. We (SSQ) have defined and seen first hand just how successful an incremental, pay-as-you-go approach can be in a wide range of service oriented organizations. 

Basically, what we see for back-office and service delivery organizations is that fundamental Business Process Management (BPM) and Lean can make for an incredibly cost-effective way to make near-immediate, high impact improvements. 

In a services environment, BPM and Lean allows you to consistently execute well-defined, low risk, and high impact projects  that are clearly aligned with the real goals of the business …. for many, a better path  to  Continuous Improvement

BPM crystallizes value streams (processes) and establishes measurement systems that clearly identify the highest value gaps in performance, from both customer and business perspectives. These gaps represent business cases, and ultimately, projects.  Define a good prioritization approach, and you have a project pipeline.

Lean is an inexpensive and highly effective way, then, to execute those projects and close those performance gaps.  Now, there is not doubt that not all projects identified will be lean projects.  You will for sure find capital projects, six sigma projects, and even some process redesign projects.  BUT, my experience is that a significant number of the highest value projects in service and service delivery organizations are indeed Lean projects. They focus on doing more with less, reducing cycle time, or reducing cost.  That’s lean.

BPM and Lean.  Done well, you can get near-term results AND set the stage for long-term sustainable results.  And, the beauty of it is that it can be very lightweight and cost-effective.  Contact me if you want to discuss how this lightweight approach to CI might work for your organization.

I remember all too well when companies would be told they needed to “be a Six Sigma company” and to do so they had to subscribe to a formula requiring strict percentages of their employee population be trained as Master Black Belts, Black Belts, Green Belts and Yellow Belts.  In addition, the definitions of the knowledge those people required was equally strictly enforced.  Companies were told achieving these goals would make them a Six Sigma company and being a Six Sigma company would make them successful with their customers and shareholders. 

Anyone that lived through the last 15 years of evolution in the field of Operational Excellence can recognize the folly of this prescription.  With the benefit of hindsight, it is obvious the program can’t dictate to the business.  And in all honesty, I don’t wish to pick on any singular subject area.  We’ve seen the same sin from many other philosophies and disciplines.  In the excitement generated by a successful new tool or compilation of tools, we tend to pursue the expertise ahead of resolution of our problems.

As we enter a new business cycle, let’s bring all our knowledge together and recalibrate how we choose to apply it by putting the problem or portfolio of problems first.  To avoid having a snazzy tool take over what we do each day, we recommend the following path;

• Understand where you want to go.
• Understand where you are…which has two aspects; (i) your level of performance and (ii) your ability to improve performance
• Let the comparison between where you want to go and where you are currently performing define what you need to accomplish
• Let the comparison between what you need to accomplish and your ability to improve dictate what new capability you need to acquire.

 Our BPM Overview Presentation.

When you are finished outlining the steps above, you will see something quite different than formulaic curriculum and percentages of your population to be trained.  In fact, the solution will not appear simple or fast.  And therefore it will not be as appealing as the aforementioned formula or any other formula from the array of philosophies available in the profession.  The plan that emerges is a function of applying a series of decision rules more than simply measuring the ingredients of a recipe. 

But think about the obvious logic of the outcome.  Your business isn’t simple.  If it were, everyone would do it.  If your business isn’t simple, how can a solution to your challenges be simple.  The complexity of the solution will match the complexity of the problem.

So how and where do you start?  How do you bring order to the chaos?  The answer lies in the definition of your projects, the identification of their root causes and in grouping them together by root cause so as to build a roadmap forward.  The complexity is in the selection and prioritization of projects. The simplification comes in executing on the projects.

I spoke to an executive at a company yesterday that described the old process as creating angst.   The word itself gives you heartburn.  When I asked him what gave rise to the angst, he responded that the discipline had been forced fit.  What can you say to such powerful words as those?

If those are the feelings the prior model drove, what do we strive for today?  We strive to “PULL” the required knowledge.  We believe anyone pursuing the path above should one day describe it using words such as choice and flexible.  The emotion we hope to see at the end is relief.  That is the new paradigm. 

If participants should one day replace the words “Forced Fit” with “Choice” and “Flexibility” and the word “Angst” with “Relief”, what should we see at a business level?  Well, here are some key results that should be witnessed.

• Faster returns.  While the long path is more complex, the milestones become simpler so measured returns should be faster. The simple formula of ten years ago is monolithic and so the returns can’t be measured for a long time.  In fact, the fallacy of the monolithic argument is partly hidden by the time spectrum as you are asked not to measure for months if not years.   (A key aspect of this is discussed in our recent article “Pay as you Go”).  Armada v. Drake’s English fleet.
• Organizational Traction.  Creating a ladder of success ensures Organizational Traction by producing “wins” and establishing a foundation of knowledge and capability to tackle tougher problems.  So many Performance Improvement strategies talk about resolving the big chronic problems.  But pursuing them right from the beginning is fraught with risk. And pursuing resolution to smaller problems with the tools you need to solve big problems takes too much time and effort which is wasteful for individuals and the organization.
• Alignment.  If you adopt a Pull strategy, you can’t help but be aligned.  Your business defines your problems which in turn define your program.  As a result, your activities are ensured to be aligned to your business.  Leadership needs to see resources dedicated to the problems they are trying to resolve.  We are all living in an environment where we must do more with less.  There is no room for unaligned activities.  Pursuing a philosophy for its own sake is a luxury no company can afford.

We see this happening every day now.  Listening to the organization and being flexible produces more of the right gains faster than talking to the organization and forcing it to fit a prescription.  Individuals get more involved with something that produces relief instead of creating angst.  Pull is significantly more effective than Push.  Let the business needs and ability define the improvement program.

Contact me if you’d like to discuss this in more detail.

Everyone in an organization has a responsibility and something to contribute to Process Management.  Executives, Process Owners and Process Team Members all have a role to play to create a Customer-Driven Process Enterprise.  But leadership’s role is the most impactful in truly achieving the end state.

Leaders need to have a map in their mind and understand their vital role.  They should know the foundation they can lay, the steps along the way and how to identify when they have arrived.  But first and foremost, they must understand what they can do as individuals and buy into those actions.

Our BPM Overview Presentation.

So what personal role must leadership take to create a customer-driven process enterprise?  We believe those steps are as follows:

• Demonstrate commitment.
  • Stake your own reputation to the transition
  • Commit to the goals in public
  • Adjust reward and recognition programs
• Commit the required resources
  • Fund in full the up-front investments to get started
  • Dedicate excellent people to the effort
• Demand participation and engagement
  • Stay personally engaged throughout the process
• Be passionate about change
  • Talk about it to everybody and get them emotionally engaged

If a leader can’t buy into those steps, don’t go any farther. But if they see the risk worth the reward, they should first focus on building a foundation in the organization which ensures success.  So here are the prerequisites for transitioning to a customer driven process enterprise.

• Bring all initiatives together under the umbrella of business process management
• Communicate the seriousness of the need for a customer-driven process enterprise
• Determine an implementation plan for becoming a customer-driven process enterprise

With a foundation in place, how do you get from point A to point B?  Here are the phases of the process and what you have to do at each step along the way –

• Stage 1 – Establish.  Set a Vision, Mission and the elements of a balanced scorecard.
• Stage 2 – Deploy. Identify Key Business Processes and their Process Metrics.
• Stage 3 – Implement. Provide Process Owners and Team Members the support to establish a management system which measures actual results, gaps to the desired state and actions by which to improve.
• Stage 4 – Review.  Evaluate and tie performance evaluation and rewards to how the management system operates.

Download our new executive brief discussing scorecards as part of BPM.

Often, you work so hard at something that it is difficult to know when you’ve realized your goal.  Keep in mind the goal isn’t simply achieving the numbers established for process metrics.  The goal is a cultural shift that orients the company to the customer using processes.  So how do you know when you’ve arrived.  When all is said and done, you’ll know you are there when you see the following –

• More focus on processes than on functions
• Employees know and accept process goals
• Everybody understands how the processes are performing
• Processes are measured objectively and frequently

So if you are a leader in an organization, or working closely with one, think about whether you exhibit those last four bullet points today.  And if your organization doesn’t, ask whether you need to before one of your competitors does.  If the answers tell you to start changing, feel free to contact me to begin your efforts.  In the meantime, if you want more information, see the complimentary downloads featured in this article.  Upon download, we’ll follow up to offer a complimentary copy of our two day course “Establishing the Strategic Vision” which gets into much deeper reviews of all my points above.

What do we enjoy about leisure activities?  A symphony’s crescendo.  A well executed touchdown.  A sunset from a summit.  We love the harmony.  But in business, there is also value.  Along with that feel good moment, alignment creates value.  It ensures the whole is worth more than the sum of the parts.  And the potential for alignment is in many directions.  We want to be aligned to customers, shareholders, employees and our communities.  But alignment only occurs through design.

In a phone conversation this week, someone asked me what BPM is.  To me it is the design of the alignment.  BPM isn’t the only discipline driving alignment.  In another conversation with a private equity sponsor, when asked about their upstream measures of alignment, I was quickly given financial metrics which if crossed triggered an action.  In such an advanced market economy, we have very refined measures for alignment to the requirements of capital.  And alignment with customers is the essence of Voice of the Customer. 

So where can the elements offered in SSQ’s business process alignment focus?  How do we contribute to an organization’s quest for value?  We focus on aligning processes vertically and horizontally using KPI metrics. 

We introduce scorecards or dashboards as a way to monitor alignment vertically in an organization. The built-in ability of cascading scorecards, regardless of the number of hierarchies, depicts how the business rolls up from any perspectives.  While easily attained but it is readily understood and accepted.  It fits our view of organizations and compensation systems.

A greater challenge is achieving horizontal alignment.  Even though vertically defined functions and groups have a stake in a company’s outcomes, many times the overall company fails to optimize its potential because resources and information are “owned” by the vertical components. Thus, we create silos.  I am an optimist and believe people want to work together.  But I also believe in our quest for simplicity and accountability, we’ve failed to fully understand horizontal relationships and created incentive systems that drive people to work on their own.

So our implementation of BPM seeks to facilitate an organizations’ understanding of how a course of action adopted by one function impacts other functions. We seek to aid the company building a systems approach by giving the various vertical entities visibility into each other’s plans, resources and performance gaps based on internal and external customer requirements.

We finally seek to redefine the KPI’s balancing the vertical requirements with the horizontal requirements to get the alignment in harmony.  By comparing those KPI’s with actual performance we help a company define the projects and activities that will close the gaps to the highest scorecard to ensure we also meet external alignment.

The BPM we introduce has many benefits.  It examines and aligns to scorecards.  In ensures financial and vertical measures are met by building the muscle tissue in the form of process definitions.  It focuses on KPIs, performance gaps and prioritized project lists.  But it is unique in its facilitation of an understanding and acceptance of horizontal alignment and thus takes organizations a step closer to its optimal value creation.

So in answer to the question for a definition of BPM, I say the essense is alignment.  And in answer to what we bring different than any other focus, we feel we facilitate overcoming horizontal barriers to value creation.  If you’d like to discuss these concepts and how we can help your organization, contact me.

My colleagues and I have written about this subject from several angles I want to start bringing it togetter.  In my post On Demand Performance Improvement  and Lynn Monkelien’s, Senior Director of Enterprise Learning at the Apollo Group and SSQ guest blogger, post entitled Pull Learning in Business Process and Performance Improvement we discussed how to break the paradigm of training inefficiencies.  This was further supported in my white paper entitled On Demand Performance Improvemnt – Traditional Training Meets Social Media which is available on our website’s home page in the “spotlight” section.  Then my colleague, Eric Harris wrote Back to Basics where he introduced the various foundation aspects of Yellow Belt, Lean and Business Process Management.   Since then there have been numerous posts on each of these subjects. 

Together we are all describing a new training paradigm that is emerging where with our clients we not only making better use of technology and social media standards but also of a contemporary and robust library of materials and broad capability of personnel to meet the contemporary needs of organizations.  Specifically, with so much pressure on costs and the limited availability of company personnel’s time, it’s not surprising that most companies are looking hard at how and what they delivery to their workforce.  The key is to define what is needed… nothing more and nothing less…in terms of both content and exposure.  And that is done by matching the depth of training to the problems the organization seeks to address and putting the information into the users hands in as many low cost forms as possible as close to the actual application as possible. 

Here are some factors to consider when asking what training and coaching is needed:

* Are you addressing manufacturing, engineering or transactional processes?  In factories and laboratories where much of the improvement activity may focus on equipment, techniques such as Gauge R&R, Process Capability, Setup Reduction, Total Productive Maintenance and perhaps even Design of Experiments are invaluable.  But in transactional businesses, they can be substituted with more impactful subjects.

* Are you dealing with high-volume repetitive processes?  Much of the Lean training can be simplified and reduced if you are not.  Value Stream Mapping, for example, can be covered at a more general level.

* What is the objective and the environment?  Are you attempting to remove defects or reduce cycle time?  If you seek to reduce errors in a financial services company, the focus is on process analysis so Pareto Charts, Run Charts and the like, which are quick and easy to teach, become the focus.

And here are some questions to ask when considering how to get the chosen information to the user:

* What sort of time is available from the targeted personnel? Can they spend a day in a classroom or is thier time limited to hours per day or per week? Will targeted candidates be in different locations or at one facility?

* Do you know exactly what thier problems require or will it evolve over time? 

* Are they comfortable with technology and social media?

 The point is that you have choices.  You can follow a fairly standardized prescription for Lean Six Sigma training as described through the classic belt definitions or you can tailor your training to unique needs.  At the same time, you can perform standard instructor lead training or you can use various communication tools that leverage technologies and social media standards. 

I have one note of caution –if you cut the content or instructor interaction too far, the price for the mistake doesn’t immediately show itself during the training.  Problems evidence themselves once the training is well underway or completed.  And the problems might be that projects get delayed, more coaching is needed to complete high value projects or certified candidates fail in follow-on projects.  The result is a general loss of confidence emerges for the whole process.  By the time you discover your mistake, the effort is deemed a failure.  We don’t say this to scare you into overbuying or overdesigning.  We believe the answer is to monitor the situation closely and maintain flexibility in both the training and support.  It is in this reaction time that modular content and flexible, technology enabled support tools and methods really make a difference.

If you would like to discuss this emerging model, contact me.