How to Build an Organization-Wide Mindset for Continuous Improvement through Lean Six Sigma?

My manager suggested me not to say “Best Practices” because there are no best ways to perform any task.

Everything around us has a room for improvement only if we are open to accept and implement changes. Fear to begin something new may negatively impact an organization’s competitive edge, primarily in front of the modern enterprises that are practicing Continuous Improvement (CI) in Lean Six Sigma (LSS).

Janam Sandhu, the renowned Lean Six Sigma Expert and Lead Instructor at JSixSigma.com, believe that “The most hazardous waste is the waste process leads fail to recognize. Organizations, therefore, must focus on eliminating the wastes that might restrict them from reaching their full potential.” In this post, Janam Sandhu has discussed these major techniques for effective implementation of Continuous Improvement in Lean Six Sigma for businesses.

Eliminate Non-Value Adding Activities

To initiate Continuous Improvement in Lean Six Sigma, the process leads need to have a critical look at the current state of their organization. Identifying reducible wastes is a good first step. Project managers may look for opportunities where they could better use the employees’ experiences and skills to ensure improved customer engagements.

Identifying wastes, however, may sound scary as it makes people panicky to even start with. Because, Lean Six Sigma once had a bad reputation for organization-wide ramp-downs, as its methodologies were simplified, misunderstood, and misapplied.

When told that the organization is just trying identifying operational wastes workforce may get inquisitive about its job security. Employees’ curiousness may well be addressed by fine-tuning their actions with the organization’s primary business objectives. The workforce must understand that Lean Six Sigma methodologies are not designed to make people lose their jobs, but enable them to work more efficiently so that organizations can successfully attain the desired goals.

Rather, Lean Six Sigma strategies allow the employees to grow their jobs and to create more opportunities for people talented like them. Principle of identifying waste is how to perform jobs efficiently by practicing Continuous Improvement in Lean Six Sigma.

Defining Waste

The next important step is to understand which process or activity is waste. According to Janam Sandhu, the waste is when a customer sees some item but would not want to spend on it.” Some of these processes are, however, inevitable. For Instance – sending promotional emails to potential clients is something that a reasonable customer would not want to spend on, but must continue. While implementing Continuous Improvement in Lean Six Sigma, project leads must filter the wastes that can be eliminated and ones that can just be reduced.

Let’s explore a few wastes that organizations can easily overlook:

• People are getting specialized in particular subsets of knowledge, as there is an immense amount of knowledge for an individual to grasp. This is the primary challenge with the development-style operations and this is the reason more than one person is involved to complete a single process.
  • So how is this waste? Well… every time a staff member gets pulled into a project, the current task will remain pending on the deck. And, by the time employees complete the assigned sections of expertise, the business requirement may have evolved further to a different level. Thus, the work stayed pending and the time spent on the original task is lost time that is a waste.
• Underutilization of talent can be seen in various ways because people get skilled into a specific job they are proficient on; they may miss opportunities to grow. Equally complicated is when the organization failed to direct someone’s skill-set into the desired action.
  • This is a tricky waste, as it seems less intimidating than a more visible defect, however, that still has an opportunity to implement Continuous Improvement using Lean Six Sigma strategy — by developing those un-utilized skills during idle time.
• Instead of nurturing required skills during constructive slack times, project leads often end-up hiring new talent with skill-set that might already exist in the organization. However, just because repercussions are complicated to analyze that does not mean that such talent wastes do not exist.
  • This tends to be a resource-intensive process, but it ensures a lower impact on operating costs and a more loyal workforce — plus, as organizations grow, the more likely they need these skill-sets. Experts, therefore, recommend Continuous Improvement in Lean Six Sigma to promote enterprise-wide sustainable growth.

Inference

Implementing Continuous Improvement strategies in Lean Six Sigma is not a difficult task, however, requires a mindset that growth is not optional. Organizations must set objectives to improve and then work diligently to achieve those goals. This approach will develop an environment of continuous improvement — not for the sake of improvement, but to develop legitimate intelligence across the organization. Janam Sandhu suggests that project leads must focus on developing their workforce talent to scale-up the organization’s collective value, and the customers will thank them.