Imagine you decide to learn a new language and never make a mistake while learning it. No typos, no misspellings, no grammatical errors, everything turns out perfect. The first reaction is, “How can this happen?” Perfection isn’t believable. Similarly, if everything one tries doesn’t work, usually the first reaction is, “How can this happen?” Total failure or total success are unbelievably the same.

Learning a new subject such as Six Sigma has its own challenges. Imagine you tried several projects and always found a breakthrough solution. You would learn practically nothing significant. I remember making my first professional mistake. I inadvertently dropped 50,000 semiconductor chips on a grated floor! I ran downstairs hoping to catch the falling chips, sweating profusely and imagining getting fired on the spot.

As I reached the ground floor, I saw at least 40,000 chips on the floor. I decided to forget about losing the job and instead just do the right thing. I gathered all the chips, put them on the engineering hold shelf, and left a note for retesting before release. That must have been my fastest right decision ever. I deciphered marking codes for the first 29 boxes from where the chips fell and told my boss what had just happened. Then I said, “Brian, the last box fell on the floor.” “Oh, *%#~!,” he said. “What did you do?” I described what happened, and he said, “It should never happen again.” I survived. I said, “Yes, sir,” relaxed, and headed for lunch.

This experience made me cautious about making mistakes in a new process or area. On the other hand, my boss’s reaction made me a little risk taker not afraid to make mistakes. I learned that it is OK if something goes wrong as long as one handles it correctly.

This mindset helps on Six Sigma projects. On the one hand, we want the project to be successful, with a breakthrough result, and on the other hand we mustn’t be afraid of failure. We must prepare for it. If one wants to guarantee a successful project, the goal must be set low so it can’t be missed. On the other hand, if one wants a breakthrough result, and to have fun while working on the project, one needs a stretch goal to challenge our intellect and imagination. Such goal setting is unique to the Six Sigma process and forces us to think outside the box, develop innovative solution, and reengineer the process.

The beauty of aggressive goal setting is that, even if you don’t achieve the magic number, you enjoy the experience of working beyond rote statistics and still achieve successful outcomes. Besides, if the project really fails to deliver established outcomes, we learn a lot more from our failures than from our successes. If the project is successful we celebrate the results.  However, if the project fails to deliver results, one learns what not to do. No experiment or project is a failure as long as we continue to gain knowledge about the process.

If we learn mostly from failures, what do we learn from successes? We need to analyze failures and successes with equal rigor to understand the causative relationships between inputs and outputs. Six Sigma isn’t a widget to plug into a project and get the solution by magic. It’s a framework for thoroughly learning the process and activities to understand the cause-and-effect relationship to remedy undesired inputs or activities. It gives us rigor to learn equally well from failures and successes. We needn’t be afraid of failures; we can instead be challenged to dig deeper in the process and activities to learn more.

Oscar Wilde said, “Experience is the name we give our mistakes.”  Six Sigma is the framework for gaining process knowledge from failures and successes, and for virtually perfecting the process. Every act is a process.