Behavior Change Management for Six Sigma

Are you achieving the results you expected when you implemented Six Sigma? If not, you might be having second thoughts about your strategy. If your program is underperforming, take a look at how your people are responding. Successful Six Sigma implementation comes down to one thing -- human behavior. When you look at what your people do and what they don’t do to develop the potential in every project, you’ll recognize the crucial role behavior plays in your Six Sigma development.

CLG understands how strategy, process and behavior must work together. These three interwoven factors are necessary for your organization’s success. We help to support the strategic priorities and process improvements that underpin Six Sigma initiatives by aligning the High-Impact Behaviors^SM that are as essential to full success, as they are unlikely to occur consistently without special attention.

The Role of Behavior

Too often, we find that projects fail because senior leaders don’t understand how to help their people adopt the behaviors that are necessary to sustain a robust Six Sigma initiative. In addition, black belt and green belt professionals are typically more fluent in DMAIC tools and techniques than they are in reliable practices for sustainable behavior change. CLG can help you realize the potential in your projects by showing you how your organization can use the principles of Applied Behavioral Science (ABS) to successfully implement and sustain the Six Sigma process.

ABS is a method for understanding and addressing the behavioral side of Six Sigma. With more than a half century’s research as its foundation, ABS provides us with an accurate way of understanding the human element in process change. Through ABS we can understand behavior by analyzing the factors that influence it.

Making Six Sigma Work

For Six Sigma to be effective, people at all levels must work to recognize and alter established behaviors that block success. This can be a difficult challenge. That’s why CLG works closely with you to examine what barriers are preventing you from getting what you want from your Six Sigma efforts:

• Sponsors frequently overlook opportunities to provide direction and encouragement, and to demonstrate consistent support, through their actions.
• Leaders often make decisions based on experience or anecdotal information. That type of decision making is counterintuitive to Six Sigma’s statistical and incentive based framework. Instead, new decision making habits that rely upon facts and data are required.
• Employees are constantly asked to engage in new behaviors when Six Sigma is implemented. While work processes change, your employees are often required to make significant behavior changes as well.
• Internal professionals receive significant preparation in traditional Six Sigma process analysis and improvement methods, but typically have no opportunity to receive similar training in behaviorally-based methods.

How CLG Addresses Organizational Behavior Change

The success of your Six Sigma program depends on a clear plan for managing behavioral changes at all levels of your organization. CLG’s Performance Catalyst^® leadership process provides the framework that you need to apply ABS to Six Sigma. We show you how to:

• Make-It^® Clear - Identify and prioritize the behavioral implications of the Six Sigma initiatives
• Make-It^® Real - Align the organization on the desired results and the critical behaviors needed for success
• Make-It^® Happen - Shape employee behaviors through engaged leadership, thereby facilitating organizational change
• Make-It^® Last - Ensure that the new organizational systems and processes are encouraging the new behaviors that your leadership needs to sustain their momentum

CLG has worked with senior management teams and internal professionals in a number of major corporations to achieve the desired results. Our ability to customize our approaches, coach senior sponsors, and to certify internal professionals is core to what we do to advance our clients’ success.

Learn more in our white paper, The Proactive Six Sigma Sponsor and our fact sheet, Business Case for Behavioral Lean Sigma^SM.