Chapter 8. Final Thoughts for Leaders

“The ability to learn faster than your competitors may be the only sustainable competitive advantage.”

—Arie DeGeus, Royal Dutch Shell

In this final chapter we discuss three issues that are of particular importance to leaders: understanding and use of the Six Sigma tools; ensuring project success; and ensuring success of the overall initiative.

Our discussion of how leaders should think about the Six Sigma improvement tools is not intended as a technical reference, since this is not the primary need of leaders. Rather, it is motivated by our belief that the Six Sigma literature has provided conflicting advice as to what level of knowledge, understanding, and competency leaders need to have in the Six Sigma tools. Our goal is to clarify leaders' responsibilities regarding deployment of the Six Sigma tools within their organizations.

Some publications seem to indicate that leaders need to become ministatisticians, while others give the impression that no familiarity with tools is needed at all, since the technical details of Six Sigma can be delegated to others (MBBs, Black Belts, etc.). As we shall see, the truth is somewhere in between. First we will provide a case study of a DMAIC Black Belt project. It represents neither the most technical Black Belt project, nor the project with the greatest financial return. Rather, it is an excellent example of the major points we want to make about Six Sigma tools, and relates to an industry whose issues can be easily grasped (newspaper publishing).

After presenting the case study, we will discuss what leaders need to know about Six Sigma tools, and how these tools fit into the bigger picture, using the case for illustration. Next, we summarize our advice for ensuring the success of Six Sigma projects, including pitfalls to avoid. This is followed by guidance on pitfalls and success factors for the overall Six Sigma initiative. Finally, we summarize the key points of previous chapters, and provide references for further study. Following this final chapter we provide additional material on frequently asked questions about deployment, and our answers to them.