Lean Six Sigma Business Transformation For Dummies

Chapter 16

Ten Pitfalls to Avoid

In This Chapter

Avoiding too much focus on the short term

Making sure the ‘soft stuff’ is on the agenda

Ensuring appropriate up-front planning and preparation

The journey to True North is unlikely to be entirely straightforward. En route you’ll encounter all sorts of potential diversions, barriers and pitfalls. This chapter describes some of the things that can so easily go wrong if you take your eye off the road and try to cut corners. So here we share our experience of observing many diverse organisations to help you avoid a bumpy ride.

Too Much Focus on Short-Term Objectives

Transformation is about fundamental and significant change in, and to, an organisation. It’s not something to be done lightly nor will it happen immediately. Transforming an organisation takes significant time and effort, and needs to be seen in that context.

The bigger the scale of change, the longer it takes. As benchmark examples, a rapid improvement or Kaizen event (refer to Chapter 12) may last a week, a Lean Six Sigma Green Belt project (also covered in Chapter 12) may take three months or more, and a product, service or process design/redesign may involve generational ...