By Nan Macleod
While our politicians argue and fight about what needs to be done about healthcare and the national budget, I am reminded of how easy it is to pick and choose information and facts to build a case and make a point, to attempt to influence people’s thinking, to create enemies to be conquered rather than colleagues to be valued and listened to.
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!
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.
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.