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The Lean Six Sigma Black Belt is often the primary interface between Lean Six Sigma teams and senior management stakeholders. Many of these stakeholders do not understand the Lean Six Sigma methodology. The Lean Six Sigma Black Belt will need to manage the stakeholder interactions and coach the stakeholders concerning their role in a Lean Six Sigma project. This lesson will discuss the roles of stakeholders and stakeholder interactions.

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Quick reference

Coaching Stakeholders

The Black Belt is the subject matter expert for Lean Six Sigma in an organization. In that role, they must provide coaching to other parts of the organization that must interact with Lean Six Sigma project teams, including stakeholders.

When to use

If Lean Six Sigma is new to an organization or to a stakeholder within the organization, the Black Belt must provide coaching on the process and methodology for the stakeholder. In addition, the Black Belt should assume they will need to be coaching the stakeholders in the stage gate meetings since these are the primary points of stakeholder interaction with the team.

Instructions

Stakeholders who have not been associated with Lean Six Sigma in the past may have many misunderstandings and points of confusion with respect to the methodology. As a Black Belt, part of your role is to provide coaching to stakeholders who interact with your teams. In your interactions, you do not need them to become experts in the process, but they need to understand their role.

When working with stakeholders, remember that their focus is not the Lean Six Sigma methodology or tools and techniques. Their focus is the part of the business for which they have responsibility. So avoid jargon and tool discussion, but focus on business impact. One area in particular that has been a challenge for many stakeholders is the concept of an adaptive project. They are used to traditional projects with detailed specs, schedules, and budgets. But these projects are adaptive, meaning that each phase is planned only after the previous phase is done. That is because we do not know what work will be required in the succeeding phase until the work of the preceding phase is complete. They should expect that the detailed plan will unfold at each gate. The charter doesn’t change, but the work in each phase may. One last point is that some stakeholders are not accustomed to making decisions based on data. Their experience is that decisions are made based on seniority or politics. You may need to coach them on how Lean Six Sigma relies on data for its decisions.

Coaching at gate reviews

The key to gate reviews is to set expectations for what is to be covered at the gate review and the nature of the decisions that are required. Gate reviews can get messy because they are trying to achieve multiple objectives – provide status, review risks, make decisions, and often manage stakeholder alignment. With an organization or stakeholders new to Lean Six Sigma you should plan on actively facilitating these meetings.

Coaching throughout each stage

During the work of each stage, the stakeholder's role is to break down barriers and reduce “friction” that inhibits the team’s ability to complete the project. This is a great time to coach a stakeholder to let them understand how the methodology works. If they need to participate as a subject matter expert, you will need to work with them to explain tools and techniques.

Hints & tips

  • Action-oriented stakeholders will have a tendency to jump to conclusions. You will need to hold them back and work them through the process.
  • However, stakeholders who struggle making decisions can fall into the analysis paralysis and want more and more data. These stakeholders you will need to coach into making database decisions with the data available.
  • Some stakeholders have paradigms about the nature of the root causes and the fixes. Again, take them back to the data and let the data tell us the real problem.
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  • 00:04 Hi, I am Ray Sheen.
  • 00:06 I want to spend some time now on an important portion of the role of
  • 00:10 the Black Belt, this is as a coach.
  • 00:12 First, let's talk about coaching stakeholders and
  • 00:15 managers who are not on the project team.
  • 00:17 For the purpose of this lesson,
  • 00:19 we'll assume that stakeholders only have a limited understanding of Lean Six Sigma.
  • 00:25 Obviously, if they are already Black Belts themselves,
  • 00:28 we don't need to do most of this coaching.
  • 00:30 First, let's understand the frame of reference of the stakeholders.
  • 00:34 They care about the business impact of the project.
  • 00:36 Their interest in the tools, techniques, and methodology is only to the extent that
  • 00:40 it delivers the business impact that is promised.
  • 00:43 You don't want to go into Lean or
  • 00:44 statistical jargon when interacting with them.
  • 00:47 Instead, couch your comments in the terms of business impact.
  • 00:51 One of the major areas where you may need to do some explaining and
  • 00:54 coaching is the understanding of the project management aspects of
  • 00:58 a Lean Six Sigma project.
  • 01:00 These are adaptive projects.
  • 01:01 That means that at the end of each stage,
  • 01:04 the project adapts based upon what was learned and then decides what to do next.
  • 01:08 This is in contrast with a traditional project that defines
  • 01:11 all activities at the beginning of the project,
  • 01:14 creates an optimal project plan, and then executes that plan as closely as possible.
  • 01:19 Now, this doesn't work with Lean Six Sigma.
  • 01:21 We can't determine the root causes until we have access to the data.
  • 01:25 We can't decide what type of an improvement is needed until
  • 01:28 we know the root causes.
  • 01:29 And we can't plan an implementation until we know what the improvement is.
  • 01:33 The stakeholders need to understand that there will not be a detailed plan for
  • 01:37 each phase until the previous phase completes.
  • 01:39 This is similar to the way Agile Scrum projects work.
  • 01:43 Finally, some stakeholders are not used to making decisions based upon data.
  • 01:47 They have always worked in the HIPPO principle.
  • 01:50 That means that all decisions were made by the highest paid person in the office,
  • 01:55 the HIPPO.
  • 01:55 Database decisions rely on results of tests and analysis.
  • 01:59 However, there are limits to this approach.
  • 02:01 You need to understand the data context to know if there are limitations or
  • 02:05 constraints on decisions that are appropriate.
  • 02:08 Let's now talk about coaching the stakeholder at the gate review meetings.
  • 02:11 For many stakeholders,
  • 02:13 this is the only time that they will interact with the team.
  • 02:15 Gate reviews are actually complex meetings.
  • 02:18 They have multiple purposes, which means that they can get easily derailed.
  • 02:22 The meetings are a combination of status reviews, risk reviews, decision meetings
  • 02:27 for proceeding to the next stage, and often a bit of stakeholder alignment.
  • 02:31 You need to manage both the team and
  • 02:33 stakeholders to ensure that all objectives are met.
  • 02:35 Review the pitch ahead of time and be ready to jump in and
  • 02:38 facilitate if the meeting gets off the rails.
  • 02:41 One way to help with that is to set the stage at the beginning of the review
  • 02:45 by reminding the stakeholders what type of work is normally done during the stage
  • 02:49 that is being reviewed, and
  • 02:50 the nature of the decision that is required at the end of the meeting.
  • 02:54 I'm used to working with stakeholders who are action-oriented and
  • 02:57 ready to jump to a conclusion.
  • 02:59 I have often had to rein them back in when we are doing a measure or
  • 03:02 analyze gate review to make sure they don't jump to an implementation.
  • 03:06 You may need to teach or explain the purpose of each stage and
  • 03:10 the problems that could occur if you miss that stage.
  • 03:13 Also, you will need to ensure the stakeholders know that a decision is
  • 03:17 required and ensure that they know the limits of that decision.
  • 03:20 Hopefully, the team has done a good job with their presentation so
  • 03:24 that the decision is obvious and easy to make.
  • 03:26 However, if a group of stakeholders have trouble making a decision,
  • 03:30 you may need to facilitate that process so the team can continue.
  • 03:34 The decision will either be to go to the next phase,
  • 03:36 stay in the current phase and do more work, cancel the project altogether, or
  • 03:41 sometimes there is a conditional go, which means the team can proceed but
  • 03:44 they still have some cleanup work to do.
  • 03:46 The team needs to ask for the decision in their presentation.
  • 03:51 Now, let's change our focus to what the stakeholders are doing between
  • 03:55 the Stage Gate Reviews.
  • 03:56 The stakeholders may not have anything to do, but usually,
  • 04:00 you will need their support or intervention at some point.
  • 04:03 They provide the clear support for the project.
  • 04:05 That may mean providing access to data or products and processes for analysis.
  • 04:10 Also, when the organization needs to provide support for some type of analysis,
  • 04:15 such as a Gage R&R or a design of experiments,
  • 04:17 they help the team to set it up.
  • 04:19 Essentially, they are removing any organizational friction that inhibits
  • 04:23 the team.
  • 04:24 And if the team members report to them, they ensure that the team members
  • 04:28 are given the time they need to do the project work.
  • 04:31 Sometimes the stakeholder must also participate with the team as a subject
  • 04:35 matter expert.
  • 04:36 When that is the case,
  • 04:37 you need to work with them just like you would any other subject matter expert.
  • 04:41 Make sure they understand the tasks and tests that you are doing so
  • 04:44 that they can lend their expertise.
  • 04:46 By the way, this can sometimes be a challenge for
  • 04:48 the rest of the team if the stakeholder is very senior in the organization.
  • 04:52 The other team members may feel intimidated by the presence of
  • 04:55 the stakeholder.
  • 04:56 So you may need to do a lot of facilitation to pull information
  • 04:59 from the rest of the team and make sure the stakeholder does
  • 05:03 not inappropriately dominate the team meetings.
  • 05:06 Stakeholders are normal people, so they will bring their own set of paradigms and
  • 05:10 experience to the table.
  • 05:11 Some of these are the opposite of what we normally see in a Lean Six Sigma project.
  • 05:16 So you may have to help them set aside those paradigms.
  • 05:19 Some that I have had stakeholders bring as baggage and
  • 05:22 we had to deal with are, all root causes are special causes.
  • 05:26 In this case, the process is always perfect and
  • 05:29 it was something outside the process that caused the problem.
  • 05:32 You probably need to spend a little time to
  • 05:35 coach them on the concept of variation and waste.
  • 05:38 It is the operator's fault, that one always frustrates me.
  • 05:41 The stakeholders blame the operator,
  • 05:43 not acknowledging that the instructions are unclear, the tools are inappropriate,
  • 05:48 or the situation facing the operator is not the same as what they were trained on.
  • 05:52 Yes, occasionally, it is an operator mistake, but that just means that we
  • 05:56 need to poke-yolk the process to remove the possibilities of mistakes.
  • 06:01 Statistics are too hard for our people to understand,
  • 06:04 fortunately, this one is easy to address.
  • 06:07 Use data visualization based upon the statistics,
  • 06:10 just about everyone gets the picture.
  • 06:12 However, be careful that you don't use too much Lean Six Sigma jargon when discussing
  • 06:17 the picture.
  • 06:18 And then finally, there should never be any variation in our process parameters.
  • 06:23 Again, this is an individual who does not understand the physical realities of waste
  • 06:27 and variation.
  • 06:28 Some impromptu training will help them.
  • 06:32 Black Belts are the subject matter experts on Lean Six Sigma.
  • 06:35 That means that you will need to be the coach to anyone in the organization that
  • 06:39 must interact with the project, including stakeholders and senior managers.

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