So the Chinese proverb goes: Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. This is what you have to do to make your Lean Six Sigma deployment successful. You have to Enable people—people in many different roles—to execute the initiative and sustain it over time. And the way you do this is to educate and train Lean Six Sigma leaders and practitioners.

Therefore, we’ll cover the specifics of Lean Six Sigma knowledge transfer in this chapter. What is knowledge transfer? It’s the act of getting the right knowledge to the right people at the right time to achieve your purpose. If your organization can do this, it will effectively transition itself from planning process change to making those changes—all to the benefit of your customers and your business.

Three activities are key for Lean Six Sigma leaders as they engage in the Enable phase of deployment. First, you establish and adapt your intellectual property—the curricula and course content you’ll need to train everyone. Second, you educate and build awareness amongst your managers and leaders. Third, you conduct all your initial orientation and training for your first wave of Lean Six Sigma practitioners.

If no one ever said it, we will. The key to survival is adaptation. Well, we just Googled this (“The key to survival is adaptation”) and got 18 hits, so we know it’s been said at least 18 times before! But back to the matter at hand. If you want your Lean Six Sigma initiative to be successful, you’ll have to adapt, and adapt well.

First, you’ll have to adapt certain aspects of the Lean Six Sigma method if necessary. Second, you’ll have to adapt your curriculum to make it as relevant to your organization as possible. Third, you’ll want to integrate your Lean Six Sigma program with other initiatives going on in your organization and company.

Lean Six Sigma is not a one-size-fits-all methodology, because its total set of tools and skills is very broad, especially when you include Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) tools and methods. Even in this book, we’ve only touched on the most widely used tools and concepts amongst a deep sea of options.

A major question to ask is whether you’ll need more Lean-like skills, or more Six Sigma-like skills. If your business needs are more centered around cycle-time improvement, waste reduction, and value creation, then you’ll focus more on the Lean tools within your deployment. If your needs are more in the areas of defect and variability reduction, or customer satisfaction, then you’ll probably adopt more Six Sigma-oriented methods.

In other cases, your company may need to reinvent itself to catch up or outpace competitors. If this is true, you’ll add an innovation twist to your Lean Six Sigma program—incorporating elements of other methods like TRIZ (Theory of Inventive Problem Solving). Or you’ll include DFSS concepts and tools in your standard curricula.

In short, you’ll adapt the standard Lean Six Sigma approach to address your specific needs and objectives. That’s why we expect variability between one Lean Six Sigma initiative and another—variability in the road maps, tool sets, language, and approach you adopt.

This is a very important success factor for your Lean Six Sigma program. In fact, it’s critical. If you don’t adapt your curricula and course content to fit your needs, you might run into significant difficulties.

It’s true that a process is a process is a process, and that every organization has processes for what it does. Given this, you’d think anyone, anywhere, in any company could learn the trade of process improvement generically—then apply it to their specific process and circumstances.

If all your people were smart enough, and you had the best teachers, this would be true. But not everyone is good at abstract thinking, and at applying principles in any setting, regardless of how they’re taught. This is why you want to consider adapting your Lean Six Sigma curricula to fit your environment and type of functions you perform.

For example, if you are a health-care organization, you don’t want engineering-related curricula and course content. If you’re a transactional company (like a bank or credit bureau), you need more concepts and tools related to helping you conduct reliable, high-volume transactions.

Terminology matters, too. One financial services company balked at the use of the word “customer” in its training materials, because it preferred the word “clients.” The same company was uncomfortable with the concept of the “hidden factory.” What’s a factory got to do with us? they asked. Instead, they opted for using the language of the “hidden operation.” That felt better and fit their industry and culture better.

Lean Six Sigma is not the only initiative in your organization’s present or past, and it won’t be the last. Because of this, you want to be aware of other initiatives underway and how Lean Six Sigma either complements or competes with these.

On the complementary side, your company might be implementing a Balanced Scorecard initiative, which systematically defines and distributes performance metrics throughout a company. Or you might use the Hoshin Planning methodology to translate your company’s top strategies into lower-level performance objectives, along with plans for achieving those objectives.

Part of your Hoshin Plan surely might include using Lean Six Sigma to achieve certain objectives, especially those related to defect reduction or speed and efficiency improvement. Where your Balanced Scorecard and Hoshin Planning activities leave off, Lean Six Sigma picks up.

From the bottom up, you may have such initiatives as ISO 9000 and Sarbanes Oxley, both of which are concerned with establishing basic process management and documentation systems. This is a good foundation for implementing Lean Six Sigma, and the efforts should be coordinated.

Some initiatives that could compete with Lean Six Sigma are mergers and acquisitions, major technology deployments, or various electronic management systems like Customer Relationship Management, ERP, SAP, Oracle, or PeopleSoft. Such competition can create chaos and severely compromise the resources available for Lean Six Sigma, as well as its probability of success.

Therefore, dovetail Lean Six Sigma with these initiatives when possible, and adapt the approach when necessary to deal with these contingencies. Revisit your Stakeholder Analysis for more adaptation horsepower if you need it.

We’ve said it before: you need leadership to be successful with Lean Six Sigma. But a good leader does not a good Lean Six Sigma leader make. Like anyone, executives and managers need education, and they need to know all about the programs they drive. For this reason, we’ll cover some points about educating your Deployment Champions, Project Champions, Process Owners, and Functional Champions—your Lean Six Sigma leaders.

We previously defined the role of a Deployment Champion (Chapter 25) as a leader who drives and oversees Lean Six Sigma deployment throughout a major business unit or division. Therefore, the education and training for this role should cover the knowledge and process involved in rolling the initiative out over a large organization. Topics and material to cover include the basic tenets of Lean Six Sigma: why you do it, what it is, how it works. Then the sessions focus on specific duties, concepts, and knowledge required for Deployment Champions to drive Lean Six Sigma in their own business units. This includes …

Project Champions (often just called Champions) oversee all the aspects of project selection, definition, and completion. In this role, they need to understand the basic concepts of Lean Six Sigma, in addition to its tools and techniques. While they are not as proficient in the use of tools as Black Belts, they need to know what they are and generally how they’re used.

Because they oversee Black and Green Belts, select projects, configure improvement plans, and interface with management, Champions also need to be trained in the principles and practices of change management. They really do function as their name implies: they are champions of change.

In addition, Champions need mentoring and coaching skills, so these should be part of their curriculum. They also need to understand the process of transitioning a project from the Belt to the Process Owner, and how to conduct DMAIC tollgate reviews.

Finally, Champions are responsible for achieving the grouped financial targets for all the Belts under their direction. This responsibility is also clarified during Champion training, and Champions sign up for achieving these targets.

Process Owners play a critical role in Lean Six Sigma by providing information on the current state of a process, and helping to develop the future state. They also have primary responsibility for maintaining project results and sustaining the gains made by Lean Six Sigma project teams.

As such, Process Owners need to be well versed in the basic principles of Lean Six Sigma. In conjunction with the Champion, they need to know how to take a business problem and convert it into a Lean Six Sigma project. This requires an awareness of the different methodologies, and which one should be used for which type of problem. Process mapping tools are also a key component of their training.

Process owners need to understand the importance of data and how to acquire it to aid decision making. In addition, a thorough understanding of the Control phase, and its associated tools, is important in order to smoothly transition an improved process from the practitioner back to the Process Owner.

In Chapter 25, we talked about the different infrastructure areas needed to enable Lean Six Sigma. Remember human resources, finance, information technology, project management, training, and communication? Well, you need at least one Functional Champion in each of these areas to help drive your deployment. Some areas, such as finance, may have more than one Champion (or representative), as more involvement at the project level is required.

For these Champions, an overview of Lean Six Sigma goes without saying. More importantly, though, the Functional Champions need to understand the role their respective area plays in the big picture. In order to perform their functional responsibilities, customized training will be required for each type of Champion.

For example, the HR Champion is responsible for disseminating and supporting the policies and procedures developed during the Plan phase. As such, they may need some change leadership training. These Champions are also responsible for maintaining job descriptions and hiring practitioners, so they need a good understanding of the various Lean Six Sigma roles.

On the other hand, Finance Champions may undergo more technical training since they are typically more involved in Lean Six Sigma at the project level. They’ll need to understand how to work with Champions to scope projects and how to help practitioners quantify project savings. They should also be trained to use the project tracking software, which they will use at key tollgate points throughout the DMAIC process.

Black Belts, Green Belts, and Kaizen Event Facilitators are the lynchpins of your success with Lean Six Sigma—and your investment in them will be its own reward. Belts and Facilitators are the leaders on the ground who make changes happen and solve difficult business problems for the last time. Typically, you develop these practitioners along three lines: orientation, training, and coaching/mentoring.

Orientation for Black Belts is recommended as they say goodbye to their old jobs and hello to their new Lean Six Sigma careers. Like any first day on the job, they will have questions, and you should strive to anticipate as many questions as possible. Here are a few of the more common topics covered in orientation:

Orientation for Green Belts and Kaizen Event Facilitators is typically faster and less formal. Sometimes, you don’t really need to conduct a formal orientation session for these roles; Green Belts and Kaizen Event Facilitators can get the orientation they need at the outset of their training.

While Black Belts need in-depth knowledge of Lean Six Sigma concepts and tools, Green Belts are trained to a lesser extent. Kaizen Event Facilitators should have at least a Green Belt level of knowledge, plus additional experience related to getting a lot done in a short period of time in a team environment. All three types of practitioners are process-level leaders that need special training, as follows.

Lean Six Sigma Black Belts. Black Belt training takes longer and is more comprehensive than any other Lean Six Sigma role (except Master Black Belt). It makes sense, doesn’t it, when you think about the myriad of tools and techniques they need to learn, not to mention the interpersonal and leadership skills required?

The training process for Black Belts typically consists of five weeks in the classroom, separated by periods of on-the-job application when they work on their chosen project with their teams. Usually the total cycle time for training is five months, and includes the completion of at least one DMAIC project and one Kaizen Event to be certified (and often more than one DMAIC project and Kaizen Event).

The Black Belt candidate is in the classroom for a week, then applies that learning for three weeks. In the best programs, curriculum is well balanced with both Lean and Six Sigma elements. Black Belts also receive such soft skills training as change leadership and the team process.

Here are just some curriculum elements for the Lean Six Sigma Black Belt:

Green Belts. You’ll recall (see Chapter 25) that Green Belts are part-time practitioners who complete fewer, less difficult projects than Black Belts. Therefore, Green Belt training is shorter than Black Belt training, and often occurs in one two-week-long consecutive program.

Green Belts should come out of training with some of the same know-how as Black Belts, but they will be more limited in their ability to solve difficult problems and performance issues. The idea is to equip Green Belts with enough knowledge of Lean Six Sigma to run small projects in their areas of expertise, very possibly with the assistance of Black Belts.

As with other practitioners, Green Belts should receive project reviews and other coaching as needed. Their mentors include Black Belts, Champions, and Master Black Belts. On the flip side, particularly talented Green Belts may be called upon to coach Yellow Belts and team members. (Yellow Belts have some Lean Six Sigma knowledge but less than Green Belts.)

Kaizen Event Facilitators. We recommend that all Kaizen Event Facilitators have at least been trained as Green Belts, even if they don’t have experience in completing projects. In many cases, a Kaizen Event Facilitator will become certified only after completing at least one successful Kaizen Event (and often more than one).

Training for Lean Facilitators may not follow a set road map, but their training should cover the following concepts in depth:

Coaching and mentoring your Lean Six Sigma practitioners is an ongoing practice, not a one-time event. During training, instructors provide much of the coaching as the practitioners complete their first project or Kaizen Event.

As the Lean Six Sigma deployment takes root, the mentoring process transitions to the organization’s Master Black Belts and Champions. Master Black Belts provide technical coaching and mentoring to Black Belts, while Champions provide business and organizational mentoring.

In general, Master Black Belts make sure that tools are applied correctly and road maps are followed. The Master Black Belt identifies areas where practitioners need assistance in applying the DMAIC process and tools, and provides corrective exercises and suggestions.

Champions, on the other hand, can assist the practitioners with leadership and change management issues, such as resolving team conflicts or garnering executive support. It is the Champion’s role to remove obstacles and help the practitioners develop leadership skills.

The Least You Need to Know