Six Sigma - needed or not?

One of the questions when talking to my clients is: Would you recommend a Six Sigma Project for our company? Quite often, my clients don't really have an idea what Six Sigma actually is other than one of those management buzz words one gets to hear every now and then. 

A a Six Sigma Black Belt myself, who studied Pyzdek's Six Sigma Handbook, a book, it seems, bigger than the Bible, I developed a one-sentence summary of what Six Sigma actually is - a detailed project management approach using statistical management tools and analyses for the operation in order to attain a zero error process output. Or, in easier language and yet another buzz word - Total Quality Management!


So, back to the question of my clients whether they needed Six Sigma in their companies. I would normally ask 3 questions back:
- In case you produced non-100% quality and that product hit the market, would that mean a high risk for your company? (Imagine you are Rolls Royce and one of the flight engines broke down during a flight, or you are a pharmaceutical company and wrong ingredients ended up in pills, or any other high risk product really which would be life threatening to humans, hence bear a huge risk for the company)
- Are well working management systems in place? A management system contains, among others, KPIs, operations reports, regular effective and efficient communication on all levels with action plans (planning and review meetings), trained supervision and management, etc. 
- Is your management well trained when it comes to using Excel, reading and dealing with graphs and figures?


The more 'no answers' I get, the more I am inclined to say - "Well, let's sort the basics out first and deal with Six Sigma at a later stage. Your company is not yet ready for it." For me, and that's my personal point of view, Six Sigma only makes sense when a company has reached a certain level of "management maturity". If that's not the case implementing Six Sigma would be like killing a fly with a canon ball.

Corporate Coaching - a new Business Concept?

The word coaching is often heard as a way out when managers are faced with managerial problems; or, privately, when people need a catalyst to help them dealing with seemingly insurmountable problems in their lives, the so-called life-coaching. And I am aware that this is only a very rough categorisation of the term. The idea I am pursuing goes beyond that and I am trying to combine both, coaching and consulting; let me call it Corporate Coaching.

As Performance Improvement Consultant, and I have been doing this for more than 16 years, one goes into clients’ companies and improves what there is to improve in order to gain financial and non-financial benefits for those clients – we install KPIs, implement planning tools, we close communication gaps and train management, etc, etc; the list is endless. Every Consulting Company promises a knowledge transfer from consultancy to client so that the latter would not be left alone and helpless after the project. But of course that is sheer marketing on behalf of the consultancy, hence rather fictional. There are a few concepts and methods of how to attain this knowledge transfer, but they are far from being as sustainable as they are promised and supposed to be.

So what should one do in order to ensure that all newly implemented management tools will remain within the company in a sustainable manner? That is where Corporate Coaching comes into the equation. It is a concept similar to “Help them so they can help themselves”. A coach is hired, he undertakes an analysis of the operation, detects where and how immense the problems are, he suggests a project, and in this very project, managers and key staff of the company will function as consultants or project manager. The coach is there to do what the writing on the tin suggests – coach! He will train project managers and consultants, set up the project and its governance, and play a vital role in the background.

Doing it this way, all the gained knowledge will stay in the client's company. Also, all management tools will have been developed by their potential users, hence ownership is guaranteed from the beginning. The role of the coach is to challenge and question all those tools and elements of the management system and give advice and steer; the client will get the desired input from the outside.

Advantages: Such a project would be a lot cheaper than any other consulting project and the results absolutely sustainable and not any less beneficial. Also, all participating managers and key staff would be trained extremely well and intensively and could tick off major items on their personal development plan.

Disadvantages: Unfortunately, such a project could take longer and should only be undertaken within smaller to medium-sized companies or departments within big companies. Due to the length of the project the cost pressure should not be too high and human resources deployed by the clients’ companies would need some spare time to participate.

I have been doing this for a few years, even successfully, but those projects came into life more out of sheer co-incidence. What I’d like to do is to discover the market a little and see if my ideas are any feasible. 

Challenge 2012

Hello Readers,


I am pretty good in regularly updating my travel blog. Unfortunately, this is not so true for my professional one. But thinking about it, I am lacking a concept of what to do with the Naked Consultant blog. Initially, I wanted to use it to write down all my projects I worked on in the past, which I did, more or less well, and when that was over, I thought I could talk about my current projects and assignments. I was quickly faced with a dilemma - confidentiality versus regular communication. So I left it, confidentiality won, and I put the blog to rest for the unforeseen future. 


Things have changed now. My 2 year assignment with my client in Derbyshire is coming rapidly to an end and the question of what to do with my blog is emerging again. 


The last 2 years were good ones - not only because the projects I managed were successful (one day soon I will elaborate further of what we did there), but also because I learned a lot about my strengths and weaknesses and where I should focus on in my career as freelancing management consultant. 


And that's already the crux - do I see myself as "management consultant"? I guess yes, as consulting is what I do and have always done, but the term alone is so widespread and general that in the end it does not help when building a career outside one of the bigger or smaller consulting companies on this planet. 


Based on what I am good at and what I have enjoyed the most over the years I want to see myself as "Corporate Coach". But more on that and the concept in my next blog entry... 

The Undutchables

Recently, in fact last Friday, I gave a workshop called "The Undutchables". It was a workshop for a Dutch audience introducing them to German and British business styles.

The agenda:
1. Stereotypes
2. Geert Hofstede's Dimensions of Culture
3. Patterns of Multicultural Business Behaviours
4. Group Work: Business Styles
5. Group Work: Entertainment
6. The English Class System
7. Language Barriers

The workshop lasted from 14.00 to 19.00 and there were 14 people present. The audience were Dutch management consultants; their company wants to go abroad and the target was to sensitise them for foreign ways of behaviour.

New Project in Derbyshire

My blog entries have become rather "limited" in the last few months, but I am on a new project now and obviously cannot give out any information about it. One thing though, it is a supply chain excellence project where the focus lies on procurement as the core process with all the other neighbouring process around which need looking at.

For a change the project is in the UK and not abroad; in fact, it is in Derbyshire where I am spending most of my time these days. Nice area, extremely nice people, and a very challenging project.

Once I have a bit more time I shall come back and write about a subject more in detail.

Wroclaw, September 2009

This week I am doing the same as last week in Budapest. It is the same holding, but a different local client; the business is the same, but somehow the 2 sites are completely different.

I am doing the audit - Supply Chain Planning, Supply Chain Operations, and the Distribution Centre.

Budapest, August 2009

I visited my client in Budapest for the week and undertook an audit of the management system I installed 2 years ago. The management system basically comprises the 2 main parts - an organisational separation from planning and operations, and the implementation of lean management tools which would help them to manage the operation efficiently.

I am flying to Budapest again in 2 weeks and continue and follow-up on the audit. I am also presenting a tool for stock management which will help them to make their stock situation visible and act accordingly.