A consultant told the story of two Six Sigma teams that made separate presentati

Question

A consultant told the story of two Six Sigma teams that made separate presentations on how they could improve processes in their own areas. At the end of the second presentation, the consultant asked a basic question that stopped both Black Belt team leaders in their tracks: “Haven’t you both just proposed making improvements based on eliminating parts of the processes in the other group’s areas? It seems that the implementation costs in one area will cancel out the savings in the other area!” What had the Black Belts failed to recognize? What would you recommend to prevent this situation from happening in other organizations?

Explanation / Answer

The things which were not recognized by these black belts is the fact that each department is a part of an element of the entire organization. These belts are treating their departments as a distinctive element or entity but if we look closely, we will come to know that it is the combination of the department and their processes which forms the comprehensive business work.

I would recommend them to reunite in the Board Room and get together as a cross-functional team, in order to improve the coordination and innovations, they need to concentrate on certain goals across both the departments and also with the other departments and try to sort out the common issues and problems, at the same time try to improve processes of either department to accommodate each other along with the whole organization.

I would suggest to other organizations to prevent these sort of things to occur, they should develop some cross-functional teams initially rather than distinguishing the projects by different departments.

Related Questions

Navigate

• Browse (All)
• Browse A
• Subjects

Integrity-first tutoring: explanations and feedback only — we do not complete graded work. Learn more.