Last week I had the opportunity to present a webinar at the Project Management Viewblog. I spoke on how Six Sigma-powered problem statements can actually improve innovation in a project. Interestingly, that’s contrary to what many product managers believe. (You can review a full audio-video playback of the webinar presentation by clicking here.) (more…)

Newcomers to Six Sigma often struggle to pre-emptively recognize improvement projects that are ill-formed and bound to languish. This ability to spot problem projects develops with time and experience. But after seeing and reviewing thousands of projects, I have found that there are some key indicators—some telltale clues—that allow even inexperienced reviewers to know it’s time to stop and take a closer look at a project’s viability. (more…)

Over the last few months, I have been helping an international holding company assess the operations of their portfolio of companies. They want to know things like, “How Lean are the operations at each company?” “How far along is each company in its Six Sigma improvement journey?” And, “What are the common opportunties and strengths we can build upon?” I’ve visited company sites, reviewed operation activities, collected data, and interviewed executives and staff. I have found that, in many ways, the foundation for excellence in operations can be boiled down to a single, simple question: “How do you define quality?” (more…)

Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923) was an Italian economist who proposed that 80 percent of an economy’s wealth is held by 20 percent of its population. Since Pareto proposed his famous principle, it has been confirmed that this 80-20 rule of thumb also applies to many other phenomena, including the distribution of product/process quality. For example, it has been found that 80 percent of the observed defects on a product or in a process can be attributed to 20 percent of the possible causes.

The Pareto Principle is a principle because, by definition, it holds true across a broad range of situations and applications. The Pareto Principle describes the behavior of much more than just the usual distribution of product or manufacturing defects. Here are some other areas—from both business and life—where I’ve found the Pareto Principle provides the key to understanding and improvement: (more…)

Bill Kappele, technical director and instructor at consulting company Objective DOE, does a great job of teaching individuals and organizations how to use experiments to reach a powerful level of improvement knowledge. He’s compiled a list of 10 statistical concepts that every engineer should know.

Bill’s list is excellent. In fact, I believe his 10 key concepts should be known by everyone tasked with making process or system improvements. But because Bill’s audience is primarily engineers, the language he’s used may be hard for some to get through. Here’s how I would tweak Bill’s list to extend it’s value to a larger audience: (more…)

Proportions pop up everywhere in life — “Four out of five dentists recommend…”, “Obama leads Clinton by ten percentage points among likely voters in Wisconsin…”, “Last month’s manufacturing yields are up from a year ago…”, and so on. Anytime you calculate the fraction, portion, or percentage something takes up from the whole, that’s a proportion. And Six Sigma provides a method for you to discover if one proportion is truly different from another. (more…)

Michael Marx has published some great research in the latest edition of iSixSigma Magazine. It shows that soft skills (like verbal communication, team skills, leadership, etc.) are considered more important to success in Six Sigma than technical/analytical skills.

The news comes as no surprise to me. For many years I’ve cautioned managers and students that “soft” issues are the toughest part of almost all improvement efforts—much more often than technical issues. If you review your own experiences, you’ll likely find the same: when a project or effort has fallen short, was it due purely to a technical issue? Probably not. Instead, it usually was an organizational, interpersonal, or team issue that brought the project to its knees.

In my experience, those armed with only technical skills, even superior technical skills, don’t achieve nearly as much improvement as those who have developed good soft skills, even if their technical capabilites are below average.

My recommendation is to make soft skill training a foundation of your toolset. And resharpen your skills regularly. What’s the best way I’ve found: reading and rereading (and rereading again) Stephen Covey’s classic, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. It is my favorite resource for improving my capabilities of successfully interacting with others.

What other soft skill resources have you found helpful?