Driving Process Excellence / Lean Six Sigma Throughout Your Organization – You’re Not the Only One Who Needs It

4 minute read

Upland Admin

 

My colleague, Doug Riseberg, and I led a webinar in conjunction with the PEX Network – Driving Process Excellence (Lean Six Sigma) Throughout Your Organization – You’re Not the Only One Who Needs It. 

We decided to focus on this topic after witnessing many customers suffer from departmental silos. What are departmental silos, you ask? According to our friends at Forbes, the silo mindset is a “mindset present when certain departments or sectors do not wish to share information with others in the same company. This type of mentality will reduce efficiency in the overall operation, reduce morale, and may contribute to the demise of a productive company culture.” After years of working with and helping professionals with their Process Excellence/Continuous Improvement/Lean Six Sigma efforts, we noticed that Process Professionals aren’t the only ones who rely on process – it permeates every level and facet of your organization. Without process, inefficiencies would run rampant, productivity would slump and capital expenditure would be out of hand.

Think about it – department silos often exist and are sadly a growing reality for organizations of all sizes. Patrick Lencioni sums up the result of silos pretty perfectly in his quote below.

“Silos – and the turf wars they enable – devastate organizations. They waste resources, kill productivity, and jeopardize the achievement of goals.”
-Patrick Lencioni, Silos, Politics and Turf Wars

There’s hope for change though. From what we’ve witnessed, today’s top organizations create a unified vision and work towards achieving a common goal. They are aligned across the organization and focus on the same strategic objectives.

During the webinar, we shared a real-life example from one of our current customers. We’ll call him “Steve” for the purposes of this blog. Steve is a Plant Manager and Process Excellence Extraordinaire. He’s an expert in project chartering, project prioritization, project execution, financial tracking and performance reporting. Yet, his expertise doesn’t permeate through the broader organization. Why? One word: Silos.

We can’t really blame Steve for this tragic occurrence though. This happens pretty regularly at organizations of all sizes. Steve doesn’t see the need to share his expertise. He’s delivering on HIS objectives. Why should he care beyond that? Better yet – he doesn’t even understand how to share his expertise with the rest of the organization. Where would he even begin the process? Organizations reach a certain size and employees often only do what matters to their specific segment of the organization. Much needed thought leadership and department-level expertise fail to permeate to the broader organization. Steve’s strong disciple of using and managing portfolios is a desperate need in other areas of the business. Yet, we continue to see organizations face a common set of issues in not only sharing best practices but also in consistently and rapidly delivering true innovation to market. This viscous cycle must be stopped.

Check out our webinar to learn more about why Process Excellence / Lean Six Sigma professionals aren’t the only ones who need Process Excellence. You’ll hear best practices that should be shared and leveraged throughout other parts of an organization including NPD (New Product Development), PMO (Project Management Office) and CapEx (capital expenditures). Listen to the full webinar here.

You’ll also learn how to:

  • Take Process Excellence / Lean Six Sigma project portfolio management planning to other areas of the business
  • Leverage proven Process Excellence / Lean Six Sigma project charter vetting strategies to gain executive support
  • Develop project tracking and reporting strategies to ensure executive alignment and buy-in
  • Manage your project portfolio to report on realized cost and benefits versus plan
  • Provide compelling, real-time status reports to keep stakeholders engaged and project successful
  • Let us know your thoughts or any other best practices you can share from your organization.

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