5 ways to develop six sigma company culture

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Organizational culture is often seen, rightly or wrongly, as an impediment to getting new ideas such as six sigma launched. I often hear about why certain ways of working are taboo or how things have failed in the past and so cannot be tried again for the stigma attached to them. Engendering a culture which supports the goals of the corporation and empowers its people to utilize the power of six sigma is an essential platform for growth.

Most people in organizations are under-utilized. Despite everybody’s workload, much effort and activity is not directly connected to company or team goals, so inefficiencies prevail.

This post looks at some of the reasons that cultures are formed the way they are, why it is easier to do things the way they have always been done and five techniques to guide your culture in a desirable direction to build capabilities and motivate for the future.

Being an attractive place to work is not something measured (regrettably) on the bottom line of the annual report, but certainly affects it. Managers must pay attention to nurturing culture in teams and across organizational boundaries if they expect to do more with less as their organizations face the challenges of the future. In addition, with so much change in staffing levels and the trend to outsourcing, defining the company as being something more than a paycheck becomes critical and essential to achieving desirable future goals.

When I hear about culture issues from executives I always relate a favorite anecdote about how organizational culture is formed. There are three monkeys standing in line in a cage, and above the third monkey there is a bunch of bananas. The third monkey naturally reaches for the sweet treats, and as he takes one, the other two monkeys are drenched with water. So they immediately start at the third monkey who is busily munching on his favorite food. But he doesn’t realize what.s happening, so he reaches for another banana and the other two are deluged. By the time the third monkey has eaten the bunch of bananas, the other two are quite annoyed. So in steps the scientist, and replaces the third monkey with a new monkey. He sees the bananas and as he stretches out his arm, he is attacked by the other two monkey. The new monkey doesn’t quite understand why, but quickly stops going after the bananas. Some time passes and the scientist comes back and takes one of the drenched monkeys and replaces him. This new monkey again goes for the bananas and the other two attack him. Then the scientist replaces the third of the original monkeys, with a new one. This new monkey is immediately attacked, and has no idea why. Even when the banana/water system is disabled, and another monkey introduced, he is attacked immediately. And if the scientist keeps repeating the experiment, the two monkeys in the cage attack the new ape being introduced, though nobody can remember why, it’s just the way it is. Sounds familiar?

Techniques for Six Sigma Culture Development
Start Small, Act Big: Begin change with yourself, become a leader in culture change. Work with the team around you and try to understand your culture as it stands currently. When you have six sigma success stories to brag about how well the people in your team work together and what a great place your department is to work, have team members talk about it to virally market it around the organization. No fanfares, just using the grapevine. You’ll be amazed at how many people will contact you wanting to know how it was done.

Build Trust: Trust begins with yourself and your team. Often times people trust the people they work most closely with, but distrust those that are in another department or function etc. If the environment around people is one of distrust, you will have a hard time motivating employees to give you anything but standard responses. Ask yourself and your team about what percentage of time is spent dealing with political games, interpersonal/departmental rivalries and conflicts and hidden agendas. When you reach a number, think about how to reduce it through having open communication channels on dealing with criticism, complaints and competition.

Engender Collaboration: The reason that most small teams trust each other is because they have an opportunity to work with people closely and to get to know one another. They feel comfortable enough to empathize and model how different people will react. Most people spend a lot of time thinking about how to do this with their boss, and not enough time on how to do this with their counterparts in other parts of the organization. Instead of trying to barter a culture of compromise (where you give up things), try to have a culture of collaboration which requires commitment from people to listen to each other fully. To work on collaboration skills, select projects and issues you are currently grappling with and brainstorm with a variety of people individually and in a group. Encourage them to hear one another out, and present the list of ideas gathered from a number of meetings and see how they compare. Also, be sure to celebrate success stories of collaboration across departments or inter-team. Small rewards go a long way in changing behaviors.

Inspire Creativity: Necessity is the mother of invention so the old saying goes, and these are not idle words. Work on the challenges big and small and encourage creativity, by making people think of ideas they believe would never work in the current organization, either because the idea would be ridiculed, would be so out of the norm that it would be killed immediately or because it was tried before and failed. Sharing ideas out of the norm helps build trust and you could also work on how to run these kinds of brainstorming exercises in the future for collaboration. Don’t limit the flow of ideas, and tune them to be useful solutions to the issues you are facing.

Inspire Action: There are many barriers to action. For example, at a personal level where too much time is spent on activities that are not critical to team goals, or at an organizational level from insufficient employee motivation, and even on a leadership level that fails to engage the hearts and minds of people. So how to inspire action that blasts through these barriers? Execute, execute, execute. Plan on implementing ideas, and execute on that plan. If you meet with failure, figure out why. Notice how long it takes to do the planning for the implementation of an idea, and work on making the process better. Commit to having action plans at the end of every meeting, and not just an action to plan another meeting. Understand the strengths of each team member and use them to their full potential, people doing what they do best is vital to execution.

These techniques will help you to start to create the six sigma culture you want in your organization, starting with your team and yourself. There are many business benefits of why having a culture of openness and empowerment will drive success for your company, but the real benefits will have to be discovered in your own company. Engage hearts and minds and you will reap the benefits.

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Comments

By Succession Planning on September 22nd, 2008 at 2:30 pm

Thanks for the information!

By qamanager on September 22nd, 2008 at 3:08 pm

Hey – no problem, I'm glad the post was of some benefit!

By Employee incentives on November 16th, 2008 at 6:57 am

That's an interesting and very insightful article. What surprises me the most is that we can still easily find companies that don't have any vision or culture, don't have any differential identity and that work just for the sole purpose of profit, those companies are fade and certainly lack quality management. I don't even want to think about their wrong or absent reward system…

By qamanager on November 17th, 2008 at 2:37 pm

I agree – look at Toyota. They embody the principles you espouse.

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