In my first post in this series, I mentioned that Minitab reached out to our customers who are practitioners of quality improvement to better understand how they complete projects, what tools they use, and the challenges they come across in achieving quality initiatives. One area they said they were struggling with was training—actually getting their belts or project team members adequately trained to complete projects independently.
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(For previous posts about how to avoid a lean Six Sigma project failure, take a look at parts 2 and 3.)
Insufficient training
Quality practitioners told us projects were failing because of insufficient training. But why was their training insufficient? Their responses revealed a couple scenarios. In many smaller companies, only Black Belts are trained in order to keep costs down. These companies send a few people away to be trained (maybe as a Black Belt, for example), with the expectation that they can come back and sufficiently train all of their colleagues.
However, this plan tends to backfire for several different reasons. Because the people tasked with training others spend so much time training, they don’t have enough time to practice what they’ve learned and complete successful project, or prove that the methodology actually works. Other times, process owners are preliminarily tasked with leading projects, but they might not have been formally trained yet, so they may not feel confident or have the knowledge to really support the project to completion.
Another cause of insufficient training is that the importance of “learning by doing” is not always explored during the training. Training might focus too much on the theory of a certain methodology, but trainees never actually bring a real project to the training and complete it. Momentum can be lost if trainees don’t ever see the value of completing a real project.
These are just a couple of items to consider when you’re starting your company's training program—perhaps a few traps you can avoid. Although Minitab doesn’t offer Six Sigma training, we do offer several public, remote, and onsite training options to help you learn about our software. You can check them out here.
Lack of management support
The top reason customers shared with us about why their projects were failing will likely not come as a big surprise to you: a lack of management support. The training program can be top-notch, and teams can be working together seamlessly, but if there isn’t management support or buy-in, you’re going to have a tough time getting your solutions implemented and being successful with your overall improvement program.
But what does good management support actually look like? According to the customers we surveyed, the following characteristics were identified:
People who said they had good management support spoke of receiving a lot of moral support from management, as well as recognition for successful projects. Top management’s awareness of the various projects being worked on, as well as their understanding of the Six Sigma methodology, were also reasons given.
Understanding some of the barriers mentioned in this series should help prevent project failures from happening to you in the future. Or perhaps these ideas may help you in fine-tuning your current program and making it even better.
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