Lean Business Transformation for the Service Sector
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Traditional Lean Six Sigma is just plain........

17/1/2014

 
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Change should be exciting, stimulating and motivating……….

These days its pretty difficult getting people excited about Change projects.  There is never enough time, business pressures create enormous demands on the day and often the Change program is just not sold well.  So consider, how much enthusiasm and excitement are you going to generate by focusing on introducing the old traditional way of doing Lean Six Sigma?

The service sector and public organisations just don’t get it.  Okay, they understand the importance of quality and customer responsiveness but the tools on offer don’t create a compelling enough vision, to attract people to using them.

Until Behaviour Changes Nothing Changes

The service sector is client and customer focused and driven by people and processes. People who do this work are usually passionate about delivering error free work, and they can see the sense in changing behaviours and processes to better delight the customer.  Process improvement comes from behaviour change and emotional commitment.  It requires a process which engages with those who deliver or support those who are customer facing.

Changing Attitude has amore powerful impact than analysis paralysis

What is required to fix these problems is a blend of qualitative and quantitative methods to analyse the problems and start implementing tested solutions.  As well as using statistics to map the scale of the problem, record errors and failure, there also is a balance in developing processes which reflect new behaviours to resolve existing problems.  A greater balance between the use of qualitative tools and quantitative analysis is required and that is what Lean Business Transformation delivers.

We need more balance in favour of Lean Business Transformation, whilst valuing the use of  statistical analysis

Real change in organisations is based on changing behaviour and streamlining processes, cutting out waste and adding value.  Real change is about engaging and motivating people to want to contribute and take ownership of problems.  Real change never comes about by devoting oneself purely to statistical analysis. Lean Business Transformation will do 98% of that for you, so why the focus on Six Sigma? 

Stats can be really useful in context.  If you work in traditional manufacturing, have a steady state means of production, and things start going wrong with existing or even new product development – you need to start recording errors, assessing trends, establishing route cause, quantifying the scale of the problem and all this requires a degree of statistical analysis - exactly the same as you would in the service sector. But here is where the problem lies.

What about Energising people and using their Passion for change?

Traditional Six Sigma focuses almost entirely on objective statistical analysis, and there is very little which translates into resolving problems at the behaviourial level.  You know, change management’ is about engaging with people and getting them to stop doing those things that are not working, continue with those things that do work and immediately commence those things which impact improvement.

Passion & Processes Drive Improvement

Diagnosing problems requires an exploration and analysis of existing problems, anticipating and preventing new ones arising and generally taking apart, analyzing and reshaping processes to become entirely customer centric.  Service delivery is measured not just by product quality, but by creating an emotional experience for the customer or end user that wins their loyalty for the long term.

Behaviour Change & Process Improvement = Results

Committing to improvement requires a balance of change techniques which means reviewing what is on offer.  So, you may want to consider that change requires a shift in mindset, attitude reflected in behaviour and think of looking at a balanced toolkit to bring about that change.  Consider the Lean Business Transformation contribution and integrate this with statistical analysis, but let’s move away from assuming that every company or organization makes widgets, and that every solution can be boiled down to a statistical equation.


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    Philip Atkinson is a strategic  OD advisor, trainer, coach and author of books and articles on organizational change and leadership

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