Elon Musk…innovator and visionary. The guy is mass producing electric cars that are sexy, digging tunnels under Los Angeles and trying to go to Mars. When he gets focused on a vision he typically makes it happen, against all odds. Recently, Tesla hit a downturn with manufacturing, and a board of directors who were seeking to remove Musk from his company. Let’s talk about adversity!

It may be a great time to post this inspirational video and recharge with the lion of Elon Musk:

The post [VIDEO] Building the Future With Elon Musk appeared first on 6sigma.

Savvy business leaders understand that during the month of December, there just isn’t the same focus on success. There are too many distractions. Now that the holidays are over, the clock is ticking on 2018 and it is time to get refocused and back to work! For some, that is going to be much easier said than done. Let’s take the thoughts and ideas on successful leadership and bring  them down to the basics. Here are a few tips for getting 2018 off to a strong start.

• Get Up and Get Going – Get an early start on your day! The most successful are up before 5 am and focusing on success. It is their time to sharpen their minds and be super productive on what matters, without the distractions of the office environment. Journal, read and send out those crucial first emails of the day.
• Journal Your Thoughts – Write in a journal twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening. The act of journaling clears the mind and sets in stone your thoughts, goals and inspirations. The action of writing your goals sets a solid foundation.
• Read A Book – The most successful business leaders are voracious readers. Dig into books that inspire and motivate. You can get into the minds of successful people and understand their thoughts and practices.
• Self-Development – Training and self-development are crucial to your success in 2018. Get out of the office and take a class, attend a seminar or enroll in live webinars. Successful leaders invest, on the average, of $10k a year on self-development and training. Stay sharp for success!
• Get Control of Your Email – Time is the most valuable commodity you have. Own and control it! Stop being reactive and get proactive. Schedule time during the day to deal with email and close it out otherwise. The first emails of the day should be from you, not to you. Get your expectations out first. Control your time.

Success is about habits. Developing strong habits are key to becoming an effective leader. Learn to practice these habits until they become an engrained response that is never compromised. Look forward to a productive and successful 2018.

The post Thoughts for Success in 2018 appeared first on 6sigma.

TED is a global community. It welcomes people from every discipline and culture who seek a deeper understanding of the world. TED believes passionately in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives, and ultimately the world. Through the website, they are building a clearinghouse of free knowledge from the world’s most inspired thinkers and innovators.

Most professionals have found TED to be a wealth of spirit, knowledge and thought. Here is a collection of TED Talks videos that will inspire and provoke!

Ten Thought Provoking TED Talks You Must See

The post TED Talks: Here Are Ten That Will Make an Impact appeared first on 6sigma.

1. Six Sigma makes a person more effective at their job

No one wants to be a failure at their job, we all want to excel in our field of work. When you implement Six Sigma as part of your business practices, it gives you a robust problem-solving methodology. It doesn’t matter what the problem is or how complex it is, you will find a solution to it thanks to six sigma.

When a person has the ability to solve a wide range of problems effectively, it puts them in a position where they can work for any industry in the world and excel. Six Sigma is a process that steers a person in the right direction by making sure they are organized, come up with creative solutions and enhances their analytical skills.

While you can apply different techniques to deal with work-based problems when they arise, there aren’t many better techniques that produce the same results as six sigma. You are always in full control when you use six sigma.

• Six Sigma can help you grow as a leader

When an organization is carrying out its various projects, it is only right that they use Six Sigma. Implementing Six Sigma as a project is being carried out gives you a chance to showcase your skill to management as well as colleagues.

It can be a moment in the spotlight you were looking for at work. This can let them know that you have the ability to deal with problems when they arise in the organization. Constant interaction with management and colleges does improve ones communication as well as decision making skills.

When communication and decision making is improved at a workplace, fewer mistakes are made as everyone is pulling in the same direction. This makes an organization operate effectively like a well-oiled machine.

The way in which Six Sigma is structured helps a person get better when it comes to their project management skills. One is able to lead by example, have better time management and motivational skills on top of good communication and improved decision making.

Whenever you improve your skills, you can add them to your CV to make you an attractive employee if you happen to move on from the organization you are working for in the future. You can even earn a promotion within the organization you work for should you impress management with how much you are progressing on a personal level.

• Six Sigma can land you a better paying job as well as promotion

Many organizations, especially the ones in the construction industry will always prioritize candidates who have six sigma credentials during their recruitment and selection process. Expanding from the point above, when one has these credentials, it makes them attractive and opens the doors for a good salary and promotion in the future.

When one shows leadership during a six sigma project, it lets human resource management, as well as senior figures of the organization, know that an employee is ready to embrace more responsibilities. In the United States of America, being an expert in six sigma means you are looking at a salary of $100,000 per year.

Conclusion

Based on the points above, it is clear to see that Six Sigma does help a person be more effective at work by improving their decision-making process. Everything is done in a systematic way and solutions to problems are found quickly. Six Sigma helps one to become a good leader.

One is able to direct people working under them to achieve goals and objectives or get a project done. Lastly, having Six Sixga credentials makes you attractive as an employee to potential suitors and you will be looking at a salary of around $100,000 a year

The post What are the Personal Benefits of Six Sigma appeared first on 6sigma.

Lean Corporate Mindset: What Does It Take?

So you’ve started to come to terms with the fact that you need to integrate lean thinking into your organization. That’s certainly a great thing, but it’s not something that you just snap your fingers and see the results you’ll have to put some actual effort into it. Developing the right lean corporate mindset will take some time, but once you’re there, you’ll start seeing patterns that you didn’t suspect existed before. It’s a life-changing journey that will leave you much better prepared in the end.

An Attention to Detail

You’ll have to develop a strong attention to detail there’s no way around that. Part of being a successful lean leader is the ability to spot minor issues in the organization and address them on a fundamental level. You’ll need to be able to tell when there are minor inconsistencies in the way certain things work, or when they deviate from their norms. This won’t always be immediately obvious, mind you in some cases, you’ll have to spend a lot of time looking for the answers to those questions. But if you start paying attention to the small details that matter, you’re going to have an easier time seeing the big picture as well.

Constantly Looking Forward

Another part of being a good lean leader is the ability to constantly look forward in everything you do. This is easier said than done, mind you it requires a fundamental change in the way you’re approaching problems in your work. Sometimes, leaders are inclined to keep doing things the same way because it’s worked without problems so far. And while that’s sometimes an appropriate approach, that’s not always the case. You’ll sometimes have to take the more difficult approach of implementing something new and risky.

Integrating New Improvements Rapidly

Which brings us to the next important point. You’ll need to develop the ability for integrating new solutions into your workflow quickly and effortlessly, with minimal hassle. Since you’ll constantly be dealing with new developments on the market, it makes sense to develop a sense for how they can be integrated into your work more easily. While each such project is unique and will require its own approach, there are some things that will be common factors from one to the next, and you’re going to start noticing those patterns sooner or later.

Learning from Past Mistakes

Everyone makes mistakes. But what truly separates competent leaders from the rest is their ability to learn from their own mistakes and integrate that knowledge into their future work. This requires the ability to take a critical look at your own results, which not everyone has but it’s an important quality for any lean leader nevertheless. You’ll also have to develop some system for keeping track of those mistakes and organizing them in a way that allows you to easily go through your history and see what you’ve done in the past. Modern technology can make this quite easy, so it’s in your best interest to investigate how that’s done.

Exchanging Knowledge and Experience

Don’t forget that lean and Six Sigma were built to a large extent on the idea of constantly exchanging knowledge and experience between specialists in those fields. This means that you should do your best to contribute to that system as well. Pay attention to the needs of other organizations, and try to be in constant dialog with them. You never know when someone might propose something that you’ve never thought of before, completely changing your perspective on your current work.

On that note, use the internet to its full potential as well. It’s full of useful resources that can come in great handy when you want to get up to speed with the latest developments in the fields of lean and Six Sigma. It also allows you to contribute your own knowledge and easily exchange ideas with others.

Conclusion

The main thing about being a successful lean leader is the motivation to constantly move forward and explore new grounds. This is something that every leader should have, sure but when it comes to lean, it’s a fundamental requirement to implementing lean principles in your organization’s workflow in the first place. And you should start your journey in educating yourself on that topic as early as possible.

The post Lean Corporate Mindset: What Does It Take? appeared first on 6sigma.

5 Qualities of a Lean Manager

Lean has been a hot topic in many industries lately, and the attention towards it will likely continue to grow in the coming years. There are many reasons for that, but it usually boils down to one simple truth: it just works. Every leader who has successfully implemented lean methodologies in the work of their own organization has come to the exact same realization. In the end, it’s something that improves the work of the organization in numerous ways.

What exactly defines a good lean manager though? What kinds of qualities should one be striving to develop in themselves, and what should we look for in our own leaders to figure out if they are on the right track? A true lean manager can be a bit difficult to define in concrete terms. But there are some qualities that can be identified in pretty much anyone in this position.

• Honesty

A true lean leader has to be honest with themselves and with everyone else. This is harder than it might seem because a lot goes into honesty that’s not immediately obvious on the surface. You need to have an objective outlook about the current state of the company, for example. Don’t make decisions driven by a clouded view on how things really are, because this is the fastest road to long-term ruin.

• Respect

Respect is another point that often flies over the heads of inexperienced leaders, and it can lead to huge problems in the long run. We don’t just mean basic social courtesy. True respect means paying attention to the opinions and ideas of others, even when those people are on a completely different level of the hierarchy from you. It’s not rare for arrogant leaders to completely miss a hint about something that could be very beneficial to the company as a whole, just because it came from someone who sits much lower than them on the totem pole.

• Patience

The old saying Rome wasn’t built in a day is something every leader needs to follow very closely. Patience is a virtue for everyone, but it’s critical when you’re in a position of leadership in an organization. Changes tend to take time at this scale, and you have to be patient and allow them to happen before making any more moves.

A common mistake made by impatient leaders is to stack up one action after another, disregarding the consequences of their previous ones. After all, if you don’t see results already, how bad could things get when those results manifest themselves later on? It turns out, it can actually get quite bad. Being patient is the number one way to prevent issues like these.

• Humbleness

Much like being honest, learning to be humble is another virtue that you’ll need to incorporate in your leadership on a deep, fundamental level. You need to understand that sometimes things are beyond your control, and that’s fine. You can’t change absolutely everything. But you have to always remain in control over the things that are up to you, and ensure that you learn from your past mistakes as well.

That last bit is particularly important. Making a mistake is fine it can happen to anyone. But failing to learn from your own is something that can lead to a vicious cycle of repeating the exact same mistakes you’ve made in the past.

• Desire to Improve

Continuous improvement is at the core of the lean mindset. And it goes beyond the organization itself. A good lean leader must have the desire to constantly push themselves to improve and to become better and better at what they do. Identifying your weaknesses and spotting mistakes in your own work is the best way to go about that. It will be hard at first, especially if you’re not used to being so critical towards yourself.

But in the long run, this is the only way you’re going to see any real improvement in your company. You have to keep pushing forward to develop your own skills, iron out your problems, and learn new things that you can incorporate in your work as best as you can. This will all come together at some point in the future in ways that you could not have imagined.

The post 5 Qualities of a Lean Manager appeared first on 6sigma.

Lean management is known to be a very positive factor in the work of many organizations. And yet, many leaders seem largely unaware of its positive implications and don’t understand why they need it in their organizations in the first place. And while it’s true that the exact benefits of lean management can be a bit difficult to point out at a glance, it’s not actually that complicated once you dig in a little.

• Improved Efficiency

One of the most noticeable effects you’re going to see over any period of time is an increase in the overall efficiency of the organization. This can be reflected in various points of its work, depending on how you’re measuring success and progress in the first place. But any way you cut it, efficiency is going to be on an upward trend soon after integrating lean management into your company.

This is easy to measure with various tools, and doing so is actually crucial for the long-term success of your organization. In-depth analytics and evaluation of the company’s work are going to prove critical for its performance in the future, and you’ll want to get these points sorted out as quickly as possible if you haven’t already.

• Better Quality Control

Quality control is directly tied to productivity in most circumstances, but it’s not very easy to improve one without affecting the other. When working under lean management, you’ll quickly realize that quality control will become one of the top priorities of the organization as a whole, and something everyone will be striving for on different levels.

And when you’ve improved the quality control within the company, you’ll inevitably get to a stage where you produce less waste. But more on that below.

• A More Personal Approach

Lean management is frequently associated with a more personal approach to professional development and growth, and there’s a good reason for that it just works. A good lean manager will know when it’s time to get down on the level of the common employee so they can get a better overview of their current concerns with the organization.

This is something that requires some level of humility though, and it’s not something that every leader is capable of right off the bat.

• Reduced Waste

Waste is a big problem for many organizations. But what’s more problematic for some of them is that they may not even realize that they have any issues in this regard in the first place. This is especially common in industries where waste is treated as a part of the standard way things work.

This kind of mindset can not only be very harmful, but it can be difficult to defeat if it’s already deeply entrenched in the organization. Waste reduction can be approached in many different ways, depending on the specific work of the company, but it’s something that has to be taken very seriously by people on all levels.

• Better Morale

It’s no secret that lean organizations tend to enjoy higher levels of employee satisfaction. Do you know why though? It’s not actually that hard to point out some potential reasons for this phenomenon, looking at the typical lean company out there. Promoting a better interaction between employees and their managers can obviously improve the way both see each other, and can lead to better trust and more openness.

That, in turn, will inevitably lead to better productivity across the board, while also improving employee morale on an individual level, as well as across entire teams.

• Strong Future Prospects

Lean is one of the hottest topics right now. And that doesn’t seem to be slowing down. Quite on the contrary, as more and more people keep discovering the benefits of lean management, we’re likely going to see even more organizations jumping on board of this trend and adopting these principles in their own work.

And that’s a great thing for everyone. Especially companies that make it a point to adopt lean methodologies in their work early on. Those who pay attention to these trends right now will be in a much better position in the near future, and when the whole market revolves around lean methodologies, these companies will already be in leading positions in their own respective fields.

The post 6 Benefits of Lean Management appeared first on 6sigma.

The Power of Leading by Example

Every good leader should understand the power of setting a good example and following it yourself. Unfortunately, it’s not rare to see leaders going more along the lines of the motto do as I say, not as I do. It’s true just take one look around most industries and you’ll quickly find numerous such people mismanaging their organizations to no end.

If you want to lead your company the right way, you have to always strive to set the best possible example, and then make this a point to your employees. Sometimes this will require significant effort on your part. But if you value the idea of growing your company and seeing it flourish into something amazing, this is one of the most critical points that you’ll have to work on.

Words Are Cheap

Anyone can make big promises in fact, many leaders have a nasty habit of doing that too often. But few understand the implications of not living up to those promises and know how to prioritize their work effectively in order to make good on them. If you start saying too much without actually backing it up, people are going to notice this trend sooner or later.

And when they do, their trust in you is going to start going down rapidly. This is something you can’t really recover from once it’s started, and you have to be extremely careful with the promises you’re making. If you’re not confident in your ability to make good on something, then don’t bring it up at all.

Teaching the Right Way to Do Things

People sometimes need a little extra guidance in completing their tasks. Especially those who’re still transitioning to higher positions that involve more responsibility. They might not show it directly, but many of those people will be looking up to you for guidance on what to do and how to do it best. So you have to make sure that your actions make the right impression.

Otherwise, people are going to follow suit on whatever you do. And when it’s bad, this has some obvious negative implications for the company as a whole. If you keep coming in late, underdelivering on your tasks, and trying to shift the blame on others, don’t be surprised when these become the default reactions to problems of most of your employees.

You’ll Learn Something, Too

Leading by example is largely about challenging yourself in new ways. Sometimes you’ll feel uncomfortable approaching a task, mostly because you realize your own low level of competence about it. But confidence is something you absolutely must display as a leader, and many people will look at you under close scrutiny to figure out if you really are living up to your words.

Along the way, you’re going to learn a lot. Especially if the examples you’re trying to set are supposed to challenge your employees as well. By working together, you’ll all develop some new skills and will gain a new perspective into how you should best use them in your daily work.

You’re Creating Better Future Leaders

And remember sooner or later you’re going to have to move away from this position. Hopefully, it will be because you’re moving up to something even better. But someone will have to fill the void left behind you and you’re likely looking at that someone on a daily basis right now, perhaps even without realizing it.

If you work hard to set the right example at every step, you’re going to do a lot to ensure that whoever comes after you will truly be fit for the job. Many leaders are struggling with this on a regular basis. Choosing a successor is not as straightforward as it seems. But if you play your cards right, you’ll know exactly who you need to hire in the very near future.

A company is largely represented by its leadership, and setting good examples means that people both inside and out of the company are going to see it in a very positive light. Even if you don’t enjoy the public relations game, you still have to maintain your image from time to time, because the company’s own image is tied to that. And there’s really no good way to go about that other than honest, hard work.

The post The Power of Leading by Example appeared first on 6sigma.

Are we really preparing leaders for the future? For decades, leadership styles have been cut from the same mold. The way you act, interact and even dress have been outlined and detail in many ‘how-to’ books, platforms and educational curriculum. There have been generations of leaders shaping the future of our workforce from practices that are outdated and frankly, unacceptable. Change is upon us and all around us. Business, business practices, and societal norms are changing. How and what we are teaching future leaders must change. For those new leaders out there in middle management, it is time to challenge the old and break rules!

Check out this amazing TED Talk on how to make a change.

The post [VIDEO] Breaking the Rules On the Way Up appeared first on 6sigma.

Business process management is constantly evolving, and it’s important to stay in touch with the current trends in the field, no matter how critical your leadership position might be to your organization. Generally speaking, every leader is a critical figure in the company they work for, and everyone should be on the same page when it comes to managing the core processes of the company.

1. Better resource sharing

The idea of sharing resources between employees, and promoting general cooperation, is something that’s becoming more and more established in business process management. It’s important to take a deep look at the opportunities your company provides to its employees for optimizing each other’s work and sharing their available resources more adequately, and solutions to problems in this field might not always be immediately obvious. Make sure that you investigate any potential issues on a low level, talking to your different employees as much as possible to figure out if there is anything that they’d like to see changed.

2. More data analysis

This is becoming more and more common in all areas of business operations, not just process management, and it’s important to stay on top of this trend as a modern leader. Data collection and analysis is becoming easier and easier thanks to modern technology, and using these systems correctly can shed a lot of light on how your company is running and what areas might be in need of improvement.

3. A flexible approach

You should try to maintain a flexible approach that’s open to change in your process management, especially if you operate on a market that moves at a rapid pace. There are many ways to optimize your performance on the market in order to ensure that you’re ready to meet any sudden changes quickly and efficiently, and it’s usually a good idea to plan ahead for that as early as possible. Having a contingency plan for most types of issues that you could run into is one of the best ways to ensure that you remain unaffected by sharp changes in the direction of your relevant market. Lack of preparedness in this area kills more companies than you’d guess, so be careful.

4. Simplicity and minimalism

Another important point to consider is that you should do your best to avoid complicating your processes at every step. Minimalism is gaining strong popularity in business process management, and it’s not just a matter of reducing the resource usage of an organization. There are some real benefits to be reaped from maintaining everything as simple as possible, but unfortunately, it’s also quite difficult to get it right when you want to keep everything down to the bare minimum. It often takes a lot of experience to know which corners you can cut and when which is why leaders who’ve been working for many years tend to be quite valued on the market.

5. Failure recovery

You’re going to run into problems sooner or later it’s pretty much impossible to prevent issues from occurring in your processes, no matter how well you’ve designed them. What you can do, however, is to provide a good environment for dealing with those problems once they arise, and getting work back on track. Many companies have a severe lack in this regard, and they end up suffering quite a lot when they run into a problem that they are not prepared for. Having a contingency plan for the most common types of issues that can occur in your daily work is one of the best elements of a successful business process management implementation that you can have.

The post 5 Important Trends in Business Process Management appeared first on 6sigma.

The run chart is a very simple, yet very powerful tool that sees many various kinds of uses across different industries and sectors. Some people tend to ignore it due to its apparent shallowness and inability to convey complex concepts, but the truth is that this kind of simplicity can actually be extremely beneficial in some situations. Learning to use run charts properly, and identifying the situations that call for them, can lead to great improvements in your skill set as a leader.

Healthcare is a field that regularly benefits from modern tools and advanced techniques, but it can also put some classic, simpler methods to good use and even combine them in different ways to solve problems in optimal ways. It should not be a surprise that run charts see a frequent use in this environment, and any healthcare professional who still hasn’t integrated run charts into their facility should definitely reconsider the way they are running things.

Representing Studies in an Intuitive Manner

You’ll commonly be running various studies and tests on patients to determine their current status, and it’s important to have a good way of visualizing the results of those tests. A run chart can give you a very simple, yet effective overview of how a certain variable has changed over time, which will not only allow you to know if you’re moving in the right direction, but it can make the situation more intuitive for your colleagues as well.

After all, if it’s your job to implement improvement processes in the facility, some of your coworkers may not be familiar with the methods used for analyzing and evaluating data. It’s important to have some way of representing things in an easily understandable way that allows you to get the point across with minimal additional explanation.

This of course assumes that the data you’re working with is simple enough to be visualized in this manner in the first place. Sometimes you can’t represent the way something changes with a set of points connected by a bar, and you might want to use a different technique in that case. It’s important to ensure that this does not complicate things too much for your coworkers though, and you must always be striving to keep things as simple as possible at a glance.

Identifying Long-Term Trends

It’s sometimes important to identify when a certain aspect of the processes in your healthcare facility has been changing with a specific trend, especially if you can identify a negative one that can call for an improvement. Depending on the kind of data you’re working with and how it’s structured, those patterns can sometimes be difficult to spot. A run chart can make it clear when there is a certain trend over time though, especially if you adjust the scale appropriately.

It can also prove very useful when comparing several different data sets, in which case you’ll benefit a lot from having a simple way to compare the changes and the way the variables have evolved over time. Sure, you can analyze things algorithmically most times, but it’s often far easier to just get a quick overview of the situation.

Conclusion

Never underestimate the usefulness of a run chart, and study their application very carefully when you’re working in a healthcare facility. You will soon realize that there are many situations that call for the use of a run chart, and applying the tool correctly in your workflow can significantly improve your workflow, not to mention that of your colleagues. Even those without a significant understanding of data can still benefit a lot from such representations and learn a lot from the data visualized in them.

The post How Run Charts Can Drive Improvement in Healthcare Settings appeared first on 6sigma.

Working in the transactional environment can present many unique problems for an organization to overcome, and a competent leader must learn to recognize them and possess the skills to overcome them. This can sometimes be particularly challenging, for example in cases of leaders who’re more used to working in a manufacturing environment and therefore familiar with its challenges. Here are 5 of these challenges:

1. Workers need to have enough independence

An important point for working within a transactional environment correctly is that all your workers must have the capabilities to make critical decisions on their own relevant levels, instead of having to navigate a complex chain of command to get approval for everything. Transactional environment work often requires you to move fast and implement new changes as quickly as possible, and this requires adequate input from all levels of the organization. This, in turn, means that you should give your workers the tools necessary to give that input.

2. The organization will need higher-level problem resolution processes

Unlike the manufacturing environment, work in the transactional environment often relies on changes that are on a much higher level, overlooking multiple components of the current process chain. In the manufacturing environment, you’d typically deal with problems within individual processes and sometimes, rarely, the connections between them. Here, you must see the bigger picture and analyze how the various resources involved in your work flow through the chain until they reach the final point.

3. It can be hard to figure out new issues

Detecting new defects can be surprisingly challenging in the transactional environment, because they may take a long time to manifest. It’s important to keep a critical outlook on all new processes introduced in the workflow, and ensure that their performance is measured appropriately, especially with regards to preexisting processes that may be affected. You must make sure that any changes in the workflow are propagated correctly and don’t produce any negative impact on the organization, as this kind of problem may sometimes be very difficult to reverse, especially if you have already moved through several stages of your product’s lifecycle.

4. Identifying the appropriate values for working data

Proper data measurement, collection and analysis are also important when you want to work successfully in the transactional environment and avoid running into some of its common problems. You must make sure that you’re not only working with fresh data at every moment, but also that it’s been correctly analyzed and that you have a good overview of any possible patterns in it. This requires you to work with a good number of competent analysts, needless to say, so you will want to ensure that every member of your organization’s leadership is on board with working in the transactional environment. Of course, this also includes you, and you should always be striving to improve your skills and bring even more value to the company when working in the transactional environment.

5. Constant re-evaluation of the toolset

It’s not rare that the tools your organization works with will have to undergo some significant changes from time to time, and it’s important to have a well-structured system in place for that. Otherwise, you risk running into significant delays and major bottlenecks when a larger part of the toolset has to be changed. These issues can compound too, and before you know it, the whole organization might be stuck out of inability to adapt to the newly introduced tools. This happens more often than you’d think, and it’s a problem you must try to eliminate preemptively, because it can strike at any time. Make sure that all your workers are on board with the correct procedures for introducing new tools to the workflow, and that any issues can be directed to the appropriate levels of the company’s leadership as quickly as possible.

The post 5 Unique Challenges Seen in the Transactional Environment appeared first on 6sigma.

A project charter is an integral part of setting up and starting a major new project in any serious organization, and you will need to familiarize yourself with the basic concepts behind it if you want to be an able and well-informed leader. A project charter can basically be described as a combination between a contract and a project roadmap, and it gives everyone reassurance that the project will be executed according to certain criteria, while on the other hand the responsible people will be compensated accordingly.

It’s also important to have a well-developed project charter when there is a need to justify the existence of a project in the first place, and it serves as a legal reassurance about things like the planned timeline and other factors related to the execution.

What Should a Project Charter Contain?

Like regular contracts, project charters don’t have a rigidly defined structure and they tend to be drawn up on an individual basis for each new case. There are, however, pre-made templates out there that can serve as a solid foundation for the development of a good project charter, and they tend to share a few common elements:

• Goal perhaps the most important point in a project charter, everyone must be able to see clearly what the company is going to attempt to achieve in the first place. The goal has to be given in concrete, actionable terms, instead of something vague like satisfying most of our customers.
• Participants if the project does not require the involvement of the whole organization, this is the part where you will list everyone that’s going to be involved, and what their exact role is. In some cases you may also need to provide justification for each person on board the project; for example when this results in an increased fee for the client contracting the company.
• Requirements if there are any prerequisites for the completion of the project, this is where they should be outlined. This can be a flexible entry in the document, as a project’s requirements can sometimes be specified in a more abstract manner. Still, it’s a good idea to ensure that the client understands exactly what your company will need from them (and from third parties, or the environment in general) in order to make the project’s completion a viable task.
• Milestones the best way to measure ongoing progress on a large project is by setting concrete milestones and ensuring that they’re followed and reported on accurately. This gives the client some reassurance that they will be kept in the loop more frequently, while on the other hand it also helps your company identify the critical points in the project, allowing your employees to focus on them.

As we said above, a project charter is a flexible document, and it can include many other details, such as listing the relevant stakeholders, specifying how communication should be carried out, and assigning other responsibilities to the company, the client, or both.

Modifying a Project Charter for Your Own Needs

With that in mind, you don’t always have to follow the above template and its four points for every project in your organization. In fact, if you’re able to minimize the project charter in a meaningful way, definitely do so, as fewer complications translate to fewer opportunities for misunderstanding between you and the client.

It may also be important to specify certain constraints on the relationship between the company and client in the long term, even after the project has been completed. This is relevant in certain cases where you’ll be expected to provide post-release support, so make sure that the expectations in this regard are outlined clearly and there is no room for misunderstanding.

Conclusion

Writing up a proper project charter and adapting it to each new venture your company goes through is a critical task that will allow you to focus on the important parts of that project as closely as possible. Remove all opportunity for miscommunication and ensure that everyone is on the same page, and the rest will pretty much flow on its own without the need for complex control procedures that drive the project. And once you’ve set up a project charter for your own company a few times, you’ll realize that it’s not really all that complicated, even compared to something like a corporate contract.

The post Project Charter: Understanding the Main Elements appeared first on 6sigma.

Sometimes when running a major project in your organization, the amount of information you have to work with can start to quickly pile up, overloading you with details from all directions. It can be useful to have some sort of analytical grouping tool to make sense of it all, and thankfully, there are various utilities you can use in the world of Lean and Six Sigma.

The affinity diagram is a particularly useful tool that can allow you to easily organize large volumes of ideas, grouping them by different criteria related to their themes or how they are linked to each other. This can help you quickly navigate a larger volume of data and ensure that you actually see the big picture, that is, that you’re not missing any important relationships between those entities.

Affinity Diagram: Basic Concepts

The affinity diagram is a relatively simple and straightforward tool, and it’s quite flexible in how you can apply it to your specific organization and environment. As a general rule, you’ll group all your ideas according to certain themes, writing them down under each category in a list.

Determining the themes themselves can take some creativity, and it’s usually not a rigid process. This of course depends heavily on the exact nature of the problem you’re trying to resolve. Sometimes the categories may not be so obvious, requiring you to dig a bit deeper in the concepts you’re dealing with, or call upon the assistance of people more experienced in this specific field.

In addition, some problems might benefit more from splitting their concepts even further into subgroups and other similar classes. This is particularly true when dealing with more complex ideas, such as when trying to organize the assets and production pipeline of your entire organization. Of course, in those cases, you might also benefit from looking into alternative forms of representation and organization for your ideas, but an affinity diagram should prove useful in many cases.

A Structured Approach to Affinity Diagrams

Feeling lost? If you’re not sure where to start with your affinity diagram, you should look at the most fundamental point a list of all relevant ideas and concepts. Write down everything you can think of that relates to your current situation, and write all those points down as separate items that can be rearranged easily.

Some recommend using a tool like post-it notes or something similar that allows for simple physical organization, but if you’re taking your notes on a computer this can significantly simplify things as well. Just draw them up in a tool like OneNote and you’ll be able to easily rearrange them in the next step.

Once you’ve come up with everything related to your project, you should start grouping those objects into different sets. What those sets are going to look like depends entirely on what sort of project you’re dealing with and the specifics of your organization. As we said above, sometimes it might even be appropriate to have subgroups within each major group.

Just try not to make things too complex for what you actually need. It’s possible that there might be a simple approach to organizing your thoughts in your affinity diagram. The important point of this tool, after all, is to ensure that you have a clear overview of all relevant ideas in your current project. If you see an opportunity for additional complexity, this could mean that affinity diagrams are not the ideal tool for your current needs.

Or, alternatively, it could also mean that you need to look at the way you’re using affinity diagrams and reevaluate it. Perhaps you could split things up a bit more into several additional diagrams? It’s a flexible tool that can easily be twisted to your own preferences.

Conclusion

The affinity diagram is a simple, yet powerful tool that can have some serious implications for an organization looking to organize large numbers of details in a project. At a glance, it can even look a bit too simplistic to be worth anything, but the truth is that it can be one of the best organizational tools for any serious leader, as long as you know what you’re doing when using it, and you recognize the correct use cases for it.

The post Affinity Diagram Why Is It Used? appeared first on 6sigma.

An efficiently organized workplace is the most fundamental step to guaranteeing the organization’s productivity and preparing it for major expansions in the future. Of course, actually knowing how to set things up in the most appropriate way for your current type of company is a different story, and it’s something that takes a lot of experience and time spent practicing as a leader. But in the end, there are still some fundamental principles that any lean leader should strive to follow, as they can ensure a sensible foundation for most types of companies.

Appropriate Sorting

Nothing can frustrate workers in a production plant as quickly as having to spend a lot of time searching for each piece of the puzzle.” Materials and tools should be clearly organized in a way that allows anyone to find what they need quickly and efficiently.

Moreover, you’ll want to think about the sorting system not only on a local level that is, in each separate department but also on a global one, looking at the big picture of the whole production plant. Figure out which resources are shared between which departments, and make sure that nobody has to spend an unnecessarily long time to get to the corresponding part of the plant.

Sorting can also prevent resource starvation when multiple units of the organization are competing for something, which is not only a common occurrence, but a difficult problem to resolve as well. In many cases, employees aren’t directly inclined to share these issues out of fear of stepping on someone’s toes elsewhere in the organization, leading to poor and inefficient communication as well.

Maintenance and Cleaning Matter

Some leaders see cleaning and even maintenance procedures as purely cosmetic, things that are just done to make the place look pretty. But that’s a very wrong approach to keeping a facility in proper working order, and not maintaining a clean workplace can lead to a quickly deteriorating working environment.

You have to put solid procedures for keeping workplaces clean right from the start and ensure that everyone is following them to the letter. Unclean working environments are among the most common causes for workplace accidents, which in turn can lead to a severe reduction in the company’s current output.

Don’t postpone regular maintenance procedures until it’s too late! They’re supposed to be regular for a reason! The last thing you want on your hands is a set of machines failing because they haven’t been kept in proper working condition, and this actually happens more often than you’d expect. Once the organization gets too large for you to personally oversee this aspect of its operation, you will want to hire a dedicated maintenance expert or multiple ones as soon as possible to minimize any future problems.

Everyone Should Contribute

Constant improvement is one of the core ideas you’ll want to follow when running your organization, but one of the critical details about it is that it has to be spread evenly across the whole organization as best as possible, instead of only coming from the top.

It’s great if you’re constantly pushing for an improvement in all aspects of the company’s work, but if the same can’t be said for the majority of your employees, this will quickly lead to a deteriorating working environment. Everyone must be equally motivated to propose improvement ideas and solutions to current problems, and if you can figure out a reward system that promotes this style of thinking even further, then you should see a lot of development in the long run.

It’s also important to ensure that these ideas are drilled into new employees as early as possible, so you’ll want to spend some time evaluating the company’s current recruiting and training processes. Sometimes making small changes in these areas can have surprising results on the efficiency of the whole organization.

Conclusion

Organizing your workplace efficiently from the very beginning is a crucial element to ensuring that you’re running a smooth, lean organization that’s built on a solid foundation. As long as you manage to give everyone a proper motivation to contribute to the process, and ensure that the company’s rules are being followed on all levels, you’re on the right track to building something sustainable.

The post Lean Manufacturing: The Basics of Workplace Organization appeared first on 6sigma.