A good television series captures the ideas, energy and attitudes of its time and setting, and the advent of on-demand internet streaming media helps long-forgotten virtual worlds become real to us again. A great TV series that some may remember from childhood presents itself in our Netflix queue in all 147 episodes of its glory, patiently waiting to tell us what it knows.
It’s a medical drama action-adventure hybrid from the early 70’s called Emergency! For six seasons the show exposed households all over America to the new and exciting world of the paramedic. Actor, Randolph Mantooth plays a young firefighter who is recruited into this new profession.
Emergency! teaches us that the job of a paramedic is a fairly recent invention, and that many people thought the world would be fine without paramedics.
Who would question the value of a profession that we have come to rely on in a crisis? Some doctors at the time didn’t think the medical training that paramedics had was sufficient to provide proper care, and they didn’t believe they could administer drugs correctly.
Randolph Mantooth’s character learned what many Six Sigma project teams realize when they try to implement their new idea: even good programs meet resistance from highly-qualified and influential people.
As Emergency! explains, the struggle to create a paramedic training program was a battle fought all the way through the state legislature. Even after the program was approved, there were still many doctors and first responders who were opposed to the idea of paramedics providing emergency medical treatment to accident victims on the scene.
The lesson: If entrenched interests oppose something as obviously beneficial as emergency first aid, don’t be surprised if you experience opposition to the changes recommended by your Six Sigma project.
The solution: Don’t rely on your innovation to sell itself on its own merits. Develop a plan for implementing change.
A Plan for Change
In the early 90’s General Electric created the Change Acceleration Process (CAP) to help institutionalize process improvements that came from Six Sigma projects. CAP includes five steps to help a project team replace current methods with improved methods:
Creating a Shared Need – The benefits that change brings are communicated throughout the organization in the form of data, demonstration and demand. This helps make the need for change stronger than resistance to change.
Shaping a Vision – Everyone involved in the change must have the same clear mental picture of what the improvement will look like once it is in place.
Mobilizing Commitment – A new and improved process requires new behavior. Stakeholders in the process agree to modify their actions to support the change.
Making Change Last – Once the improved process begins to gain momentum, knowledge acquired from implementing the process can be transferred to other parts of the organization. The process improvement is also integrated with other processes.
Monitoring Progress – Once the new process is operating on its own, leadership holds key stakeholders responsible for meeting performance benchmarks.
Your Six Sigma project may not have the good looks of a young Rudolph Mantooth or inspiring opening credits of Emergency!, but the CAP model for initiating change can help it overcome resistance and become institutionalized into business operations.
