Staying Aware and Accepting the Inevitable

It’s an unavoidable fact. If you’ve built a successful Six Sigma organization, sooner or later, someone will try to copy your success. While this is somewhat inevitable, you don’t have to sit back and accept it. Take an active hand in deterring fraudulent practitioners from stealing your business. Just look at companies like Coca Cola and Apple. There are countless rip-offs, knock-offs, fakes, and counterfeits floating around. The same is true of Six Sigma.

Countless Counterfeits, Frequent Fraud

Some companies try to pass their services off as the real deal via a flimsy copycat name, e.g., China’s Sunbucks, Wu Mart, and HiPhone. But Six Sigma fraudsters have the audacity to use the Six Sigma name while offering up sub-standard training services. Even more disturbing, some fake practitioners use Six Sigma as a ploy to clean out your wallets, promising the world and giving you nothing. They may recognize your success and try to piggyback off it with a similar-sounding name and list of services.

Moreover, it’s not uncommon for criminals to send phishing emails claiming to represent your organization. We’ve even heard of fraudulent websites, whose only purpose is to draw in customers to exploit, that are virtually indistinguishable from their legitimate counterparts. As such, accepting and building an awareness of these risks is the first step to deterring fraud in the Six Sigma industry.

Innovation is the Key to Success

Our advice? Keep innovating in every way possible, as quickly as you can. Use Six Sigma techniques to improve your training services. Employ Lean principles and continuous improvement culture for an added triple-effect solution. Outpacing your fake competitors through sheer innovation will put you at the top of the leader board, making it clear to customers why you deserve their custom. Once they realize their bait isn’t catching, fraudulent practitioners will throw it somewhere else.

Maintain Strong Company-Customer Relationships

Six Sigma stresses strong reliance on data which practitioners use to make improvements. Customer satisfaction is a key driving factor behind business success and one that Six Sigma aims to improve by proxy. It’s difficult to improve customer satisfaction directly. There’s more to it than simple hocus-pocus. Six Sigma streamlines processes for added efficiency while improving quality through systematic elimination of defect. All this adds up to greater quality products delivered quickly into customers’ hands, driving up customer satisfaction rates. The key to deterring fraud is to demonstrate to customers why your business is the one they need.

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Six Sigma’s lack of a governing body breeds inconsistent training standards, poor organization, zero transparency, and allows illegitimacy to spread. This all contributes to the smearing of Six Sigma’s good reputation. Misinformation spreads like a virus, and it is often difficult to perform damage control.

Like many legitimate Six Sigma organizations, we want to ensure Six Sigma remains favorable in the eyes of prospective clients. You can also lose money and time dealing with these swindlers, so simply don’t allow yourself to enter that situation. Be prepared for the inevitable day you cross paths with a fake practitioner. Learn what do in today’s article.

Knowledge is Power: Protect Yourself and Others

Firstly, the most important way you can protect yourself from illegitimate practitioners is by familiarizing yourself with the warning signs. Phony Six Sigma practitioners tend to talk the talk, but can rarely walk the walk. Just look at their resumé and record of accomplishment if you’re thinking of hiring a practitioner or are shopping around for certification. If something feels off, query them, test their knowledge. Give them a practical hypothesis to work with and see how they answer.  You can expect a legitimate practitioner to have a sound knowledge of business methodology as well. On the other hand, fraudsters only out to make a quick buck rarely know much of anything.

Still not convinced, then why not ask around? Find out as much as you can about the practitioner in question. This is especially important if you are an individual seeking training. Individuals, rather than corporations, are far more likely to be on the receiving end of a con artist’s money-making scheme. It’s easier to pull the wool over one person’s eyes, after all.

If you are certain of their illegitimacy, then, of course, don’t hire them. But don’t stop there. Spread the word about the so-called practitioner so that others won’t be taken in either. This is the only way to stop fake practitioners from getting the better of us.

Why Protect Yourself from Illegitimate Practitioners?

Businesses and corporations all over the world benefit from Six Sigma’s innovative process improvement strategy. As illegitimate practices continue to fester, potential customers are more and more likely to have a bad experience. This will negatively affect their view of Six Sigma, and keep them from maximizing their success. This is not just bad for Six Sigma itself, but also for the businesses it could be serving, were it not for the dirty deeds of illegitimate practitioners.

Furthermore, Six Sigma imposters and illegitimate practitioners are no better than common scam artists. If we allow them to keep doing what they’re doing, it will not only lead to loss of credibility for Six Sigma but potential financial losses for you as well. If you don’t make yourself aware of the dangers of fake practitioners, you won’t know you’ve met one till it’s too late.

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