Key Traits Every Governing Body Must Have

There’s no doubt that Six Sigma is in need of a governing body. But what would it look like? Six Sigma is a global phenomenon with hundreds of thousands of proponents in the US alone. It can help the smallest businesses and the largest companies make lasting changes to their processes. To improve efficiency, quality, and standardization. To reduce variation, minimize waste, and promote productivity. Using Six Sigma tools and techniques, you can turn your organization around, bolstering its success for the future. But without a central governing body to keep Six Sigma organizations and practitioners in check, standards are bound to slip. Here we look at the top traits a governing body must have.

Participation and Responsiveness

The greatest governing bodies all play a role in the decision-making processes for the institutions they govern. This can be either a direct influence or an indirect one, but this level of governance is essential. A Six Sigma governing body should not only keep its organizations’ activities in check but ensure their presence is a tangible one.

It is also highly important for any potential Six Sigma governing body to serve all its stakeholders as well as the Six Sigma community at large. If careless actions or bad practices sully Six Sigma’s reputation, the governing body must act on this to resolve the situation. Again, ensuring Six Sigma practitioners and organizations work within established parameters is imperative. If this they enforce this, it will ensure the standardization of Six Sigma practices and frameworks.

Transparency and Efficiency

Six Sigma is all about information and how we can use it to solve problems and improve processes. The concept of corporate transparency is a relatively new one, representing the free flow of information. You should be able to query a Six Sigma governing body, to contact them directly, and have complete access to its central knowledge base.

A governing body would, rather than looking like the Vatican, resemble something closer to Norwegian gas and oil company, Statoil. As a matter of fact, Statoil’s largest shareholder happens to be the Norwegian government. Statoil actively makes its operations observable to the public, freely providing information about their practices.

A Six Sigma governing body should ideally commit to free disclosure, clarity, and accuracy of information. Furthermore, like Six Sigma itself, its governing body should promote high levels of efficiency in everything it does. In other words, it should practice what it preaches.

Strategic Vision and Accountability

All organizations, particularly those with an agenda, require a strategic vision to drive them forward. Six Sigma leaders all have their own ideas about what is best for Six Sigma. What a governing body should provide is a comprehensive strategic vision to satisfy all these disparate requirements.

The governing body should also implement strong accountability measures to ensure they keep Six Sigma’s best interests at heart. Think about how decisions get made in the government, the private sector, or even publicly-owned organizations like charities. The executive decision-makers are accountable to the public, whose welfare they should factor into all decisions made.