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The Role of the Six Sigma Black Belt Part V: The Facilitator

Change Strategies, Communication, Effective Meetings, Facilitation, Group Effectiveness, Lean Six Sigma, Operational Excellence, TeamsComments Off

This is part of the series The Role of the Six Sigma Black Belt. The concepts and ideas presented also apply to other improvement professionals and leaders implementing improvements in an organization.
The Facilitator Role

To illustrate this role picture this. I was with a team of IT programmers to develop a SIPOC (a tool that identifies the inputs, outputs, suppliers, and customers for each step of a process) of the testing process for new software. So, I asked a very straight forward and logical question…”what are the process steps for testing new software?”

I was surprised when the group seemed stumped. It’s not that they didn’t know the answer. They were subject matter experts. They knew how to test software. So I asked the same question again. Twice. With the same response…none!

The Role of the Six Sigma Black Belt Part IV: The Leader

Change Strategies, Leadership, Lean Six Sigma, Operational Excellence, Organizational Change, TeamsComments Off

This is part of the series The Role of the Six Sigma Black Belt. The concepts and ideas presented also apply to other improvement professionals and leaders implementing improvements in an organization.

The Leader Role

This example illustrates this critical role. In one project I followed closely, the BB worked hard to earn the trust and respect of a team of front line workers who made electrical harnesses for aircraft. These were union employees who typically did not mingle with “management” types like a BB (even though BBs didn’t really didn’t manage people but that was the generic label for anyone not covered by a union contract), but they had managed to learn from one another and now they were developing a new training program as a pilot for a larger training effort within the union-covered workforce. The union employees even got to go on a “benchmarking” trip to a local company as part of the effort. It was unheard of for union employees to be involved in such activities but they loved the work and when faced with the expected criticism from fellow union members for hanging out with “management” people, they effectively defended their position and continued their work. This small band of unlikely friends (that’s what they had become) had bonded in such a way that even years after the BB had moved on to another division, they kept in touch and he would come by their shop whenever he was in town.

The Role of the Six Sigma Black Belt Part III: The Project Manager

Change Strategies, Lean Six Sigma, Operational Excellence, Project implementation, TeamsComments Off

This is part of the series The Role of the Six Sigma Black Belt. The concepts and ideas presented also apply to other improvement professionals and leaders implementing improvements in an organization.

The Project Manager Role

Because the process of certification requires the BB to close a specific number of projects that are usually defined in a “project contract”, the BB is by definition also a Project Manager. Some BBs may not think of themselves as “project managers” and in fact many of them may not even have experience or formal training in project management. This is a problem specially when Six Sigma training does not include project management materials. As a result many a BB have no idea how to define the project objective, delineate the scope, define the work to be done beyond the prescribed phases or gates (the SS methodology outlines specific phases, steps, and tools to be used), or determine dependencies, or manage schedule and critical path. Though this may not be a problem for small projects, it does become an issue for medium size and large complex projects. 
What can the BB do? There are some alternatives depending on the background of the BB, their place in the certification process, and what the organization expects and will tolerate.

The Role of the Six Sigma Black Belt Part II: The Expert

Change Strategies, Employee Involvement, Leadership, Lean Six Sigma, Operational Excellence, Organizational Change, Resistance, Teams1 Comment

This is part of the series The Role of the Six Sigma Black Belt. The concepts and ideas presented also apply to other improvement professionals and leaders implementing improvements in an organization.

The Expert Role

Companies that are serious about their Six Sigma initiative spend significant resources in training and certifying BBs (typically a two-year process). Thus, Black Belts become tool experts in using the technical tools of the Six Sigma methodologies (DMAIC or DFSS). They might also be subject matter experts (SME) if they are assigned projects within their own functional group. Finally, they may also be process experts as they are often selected because of their background as engineers, manufacturing professionals, or some other process focused discipline.

The Role of the Six Sigma Black Belt

Culture Change, Employee Involvement, Lean Six Sigma, Operational Excellence, Organizational ChangeComments Off

The title of this series refers to the Six Sigma Black Belt, but the concepts and ideas expressed here apply equally to any improvement professional and leader trying to implement improvements in an organization.

Part I: The Question

Early in my career I had the chance to become trained and certified as a Six Sigma Black Belt (a trained practitioner of process and quantitative tools to improve process performance by practically eliminating errors and variation in a process). The company had fully embraced Six Sigma and selected a number of individuals to participate in a two-year rotation program to become certified Black Belts.

Black Belts were a “selected” group of experts “deployed” to save the company (ok, that’s a bit dramatic). Needless to say, the whole movement was not without controversy and though the company did achieve good success there were lessons to be learned. 

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