Most of the control mechanisms put in place in your business were put there for the purpose of managing risk.
Risk can be associated with virtually anything – cash flow, business, safety etc. It can also be associated with employee performance and behaviour. Controls can be as simple as a pre-work briefing delivered by a supervisor, or as complex as a comprehensive collection of operating procedures or even an early warning device for tsunamis.
By understanding the risks associated with a business improvement initiative, an organisation can develop strategies for making it work. And these strategies for treating the identified risks can be successfully incorporated in the business in two ways.
- The supporting infrastructure; and
- A management control framework.
So what is a business improvement operating system?
In the context of Lean Six Sigma, an operating system is simply a management control framework that comprises a collection of specific processes and scheduled events that assist you in managing business improvement risks.
Training is not enough!
My experience is that when organisations struggle to sustain Lean Six Sigma over the first few years, it is primarily caused by failing to effectively develop their operating system. Often the leadership team naively believes the implementation will be sustained over the long term without any change to the organisations performance systems and context, with their sole focus on doing training and completing projects. As these organisations mature they slowly realise that important elements of the system are missing.
What are the Signs and Symptoms of an Inadequate Control Framework or Operating System?
Inappropriate projects are selected and allocated to Black Belts and/or Green Belts. Sometimes a solution is disguised as a problem statement, or a process of a low cyclic nature is allocated as a Lean Six Sigma project.
The development of project charters is left to Black Belts or Green Belts; project champions do not take an active role.
Business leaders have not participated in any form of training, the most they have done is participated in some form of alignment or engagement workshop. They do not know what Lean Six Sigma is really about. They have not undertaken or completed change leadership training similar to project team leaders.
- Projects take longer to complete than they need to.
- Black Belts / Green Belts are left with accountability for the project; champions demonstrate interest but not commitment.
- Reported financial benefits are not realised in business financial statements (P&L, Balance Sheet); nor are improvements reflected in business planning assumptions.
- Black Belts / Green Belts struggle with the application of statistical methods or avoid using advanced statistical methods.
- Employees in general know little about Lean Six Sigma and activities within the business.
- There is no consistency in the way projects are documented by team leaders.
- Key learnings are not shared amongst Black Belts and Green Belts.
Signs can also include adverse comments being made by Black Belts and Green Belts with respect to:
- Champion or Process Owner commitment
- Access to resources (including a team)
- Getting time to do the project work
- Being allocated additional work at the same time
- The scope of the project increasing, and
- Project progress
At an even more personal level …
… the symptoms you might experience that give cause for concern about the adequacy of your organisation’s Business Improvement operating system include:
- You are not able to clearly explain what Lean Six Sigma is at the tactical or technical level, and strategic level
- It is your belief / perception that projects are taking too long
- You have limited knowledge of how projects are chosen
- You have little knowledge of what makes a good Lean Six Sigma project
- You have little knowledge of current projects and their progress
- You hear language you do not fully understand
- You do not know the basic tools of Lean Six Sigma
Would you like to know more? Be my guest and download my latest eBook on this topic from my website here.
