It can be easy to assume that any organization with a dedication to quality improvement strong enough to create, support and fund a Six Sigma project team can easily implement the changes the team recommends and make them a permanent part of operations.
However, improvement leaders often discover that there is a significant gap between the organization’s ability to plan for change and its ability to implement it. Driving change, even positive and widely-accepted change, is an uphill battle filled with potential risk. While the stakeholders impacted by change may claim to support it, many studies (and human nature) show that we resist change and tend to oppose it.
Completing a Six Sigma project that creates process improvement is not enough. The new and improved process can’t benefit the organization until the stakeholders who are directly impacted by it accept and embrace it.
Years ago, change leaders like Jack Welch of General Electric (GE) decided that winning the hearts and minds of stakeholders was too important to be left to chance, and created the Change Acceleration Process (CAP).
The Change Acceleration Process relies on a team to convince stakeholders to make the change a permanent part of the way the company does business. This team is equipped with techniques and tools to help transform the attitudes and behaviors that stand in the way of change.
The First Step of Change
Expecting that stakeholders will eagerly embrace a new process improvement just because it has been proven worthy by the strict standards of Six Sigma is naïve.
Ordering stakeholders to implement a process improvement may seem like a quick and efficient way to enact change. But authority has its limits when it comes to instituting change. If stakeholders don’t see the benefit of the change imposed upon them they might neglect it and the process improvement will gradually begin to under-perform and be rendered ineffective.
If stakeholders feel threatened by the process improvement that is “forced” upon them, they may resist it more openly and may even look for ways to sabotage it. A process improvement that stakeholders fear and act to disrupt will meet its end quickly.
Creating a Shared Need
Stakeholders are more likely to support and embrace change if it benefits them personally or professionally. The first duty of the change team is to convince stakeholders that they benefit from the change just as much as the company does.
The change team has the following goals when working to create a shared need for change:
- Create an awareness of the dissatisfaction with the current process
- Help stakeholders recognize the need and logic for change
- Communicate the need for change as a combination of threats and opportunities
Tools of the Trade
The CAP method leaves nothing to chance. It offers two powerful techniques to build a case for change:
Threat vs. Opportunity Matrix – People respond to both the carrot and the stick. This tool is a four square box that helps the team identify opportunities and threats in both the short term to build urgency, and in the long term to ensure continued cooperation.
Three D’s Matrix – This tool helps the change team build their case with three critical sources of proof that change is necessary:
- Demand – The degree to which management is willing and able to enforce the change
- Demonstrate – Shows the potential of the solution by giving examples of pilot projects that have successfully applied the improvement
- Data – Quoting internal or external sources that state the process needs to change
This technique helps the team compile facts and “put meat on the bones” of their case for change.
Creating a shared need can be successful when the case for change appeals to the interests of the key stakeholders in the process, not just the change team and Six Sigma project team.
