A 5-Step Sequence to Navigate the Politics of Six Sigma Change
If you were asked to close your eyes and imagine Six Sigma as a person you might see Mr. Spock from the Star Trek series in your mind. Six Sigma values the rational and logical. It is a methodology based on the cold calculation of statistics and the dispassionate analysis of process performance.
It is designed to keep human biases and emotions at a distance.
However, when the changes recommended by a Six Sigma project disrupt the comfortable working lives of human beings, reactions are often illogical and irrational, based on fear, mistrust, insecurity and bias.
Addressing the Human Element in Process Change
Don’t despair. Six Sigma is not a brain without a heart. It has five tools to help predict and address the emotional resistance that arises when making process changes:
- Key Constituents Map – This tool takes the form of a pie chart to help identify the departments impacted most by the change initiative. Each slice of the pie is weighted to give greater space to the number of employees in the department who will be impacted by the change. Creating the chart helps the team identify constituents and raises the question of who will and won’t potentially be on board with the change.
- Attitude Charting – Once the team identifies departments within the organization that will be impacted by the change, members can estimate the attitude of each group. Team members draw individual charts illustrating their perception of a particular department’s attitude toward the change. Departments are divided into four different groups depending on their receptiveness to change:
Innovators – Those who readily endorse the change and will work to actively support the project team.
Early Adopters – This group is quick to accept and implement the change.
Late Adopters – While this group does not oppose the change, it will lag behind others when implementing it.
Resistors – Those who openly and actively resist the change.
This metric is based on the subjective opinion of the Six Sigma project team, so it is important to confirm these assumptions outside the team.
- Responsibility Grid – This tool helps include constituents in the change process by assigning them decision-making and execution roles in advance. This two dimensional grid displays the five steps of DMAIC on one axis and names of project team members and constituents on the other axis. This framework allows teams to identify politically sensitive areas of the project and give constituents decision-making and execution power to gain support.
- Stakeholder Analysis for Change – This is a simple list of critical stakeholders and an indicator of where they fall on the continuum between strongly supporting and strongly opposing the project. This allows the team to measure the current level of stakeholder support. It also helps determine what kind of support the project will need from stakeholders in the future. This tool gets the team thinking about strategies for influencing stakeholders.
- TPC Resistance Analysis –This tool helps the team to understand the type of resistance the project is facing and measure the degree of resistance as high, medium, or low. The TPC sources of resistance include:
Technical – People lack the skills or resources to change. They fear the unknown, and seek to justify past costs.
Political – People fear losing power, influence, authority and decision-making ability.
Cultural – People resist change because it is different from what they have done in the past.
These five tools help project teams stay focused on one of the most important factors in a change initiative – the working professionals who will be impacted by the change.
