12. Communicating the Six Sigma Program Expectations and Metrics
With Joe Ficalora, Roger Hinkley, and Joyce Friel
You have now successfully planned your Six Sigma program, and your series of leadership workshops are complete. The next challenge is to plan the effective communications to your organization about the new initiative. In this section, we will explore what works, and how to say it. The strategy should be a series of simple messages repeated over and over and delivered throughout the organization by a wide variety of media. The future belongs to leaders who can create and then communicate vision. At best, communicating the Six Sigma initiative will be a team effort including every leader involved with Six Sigma.
Creating a compelling message illustrating exactly why Six Sigma is important to the future of the company is not an easy task, but provides the first communication challenge. A good communications plan will also consider a wide variety of communication methods. One Fortune 500 company that deployed Six Sigma used the following:
• CEO and other Executive Team Members were consistently the keynote speakers at any Six Sigma event
• Global broadcasts
• Quarterly satellite broadcasts
• Videos and MPEG messages
• Coaching Black Belts to communicate effectively
• Coaching Black Belts to create a mystery story to describe their project
• Brightly colored posters
This chapter will cover a wide variety of considerations in the communication of a change initiative. To say this is an art may be an overstatement. Leadership communication is a fine science in which there is little room for error. Two simple rules are: Create a simple message, and communicate it repeatedly. Larry Bossidy once said he knew when he communicated a change enough when he got to the point of feeling like he would throw up if he said the message one more time. This chapter will cover the following:
• Creating the message
• Selecting communication media
• Developing a communication plan
• Customizing the message
• Evaluating the communication effort
A Communications Model
Joyce Friel, President of Peak Performance Consulting, has provided a simple model for evaluating and delivering messages. This model results in a 2 × 2 matrix. The two axes of the model are message complexity and message emotional content. Create a message and decide in which of the four resulting quadrants the message fits. Any given message may be simple or complex to understand, but the degree of emotional reaction/content to any given audience might be completely different. So the same message might be delivered differently to the two or more different groups.
Low Complexity and Low Emotional Content. Messages in this category can be delivered in any number of formats (mass media, public forums, verbally, electronic, or written) because it is easy to understand and the content is not emotional. For example, the company has declared the day after Thanksgiving to also be a company holiday, or the operations team in a particular sector will be using the West break room for their Six Sigma milestone celebration on Thursday between 3:00 and 4:00 p.m.
High Complexity and Low Emotional Content. Messages in this category need to be in written and verbal form because the content is complex, but doesn’t carry any emotional content. These messages should also be delivered multiple times because of the complexity. For example, the calculation of a particular metric (Rolled Throughput Yield) would fit in this category. For those not comfortable with statistics and formulae, this message could be confusing and complex, but for engineers, the message might not be so complex. Motorola, for example, constantly communicated to employees the basics of calculating Sigma many times over a five-year period.
Low Complexity and High Emotional Content. These messages need to be delivered verbally several times because the more emotional the content, the less of the message we actually hear the first time. We tend to only hear the part that was spoken before our emotions kicked in. So you have to say it over and over again and in different ways until the message gets through the emotion. Also, it is wise to deliver these categories of messages in small groups to appropriately accommodate the emotion that may be displayed.
Be prepared for this show of emotion. Messages such as learning that your job is being changed to support a breakthrough improvement initiation like Six Sigma will tend to be highly emotional. The change in the job may be very simple and even beneficial both to the company and the employee, but because employees are so vested in their jobs and feel so threatened when they change, the emotional content may overshadow the simple change in the job structure or content.
High Complexity and High Emotional Content. These messages are the most difficult to communicate, being weighed so heavily in both complexity and emotion. Such messages have to be delivered many times in many different ways in small groups and one-on-one. For example, the company has decided to launch Six Sigma; they are starting with your division, and you have been selected to be the Deployment Champion. This message is complex because you don’t understand it yet, and the message is emotional in that the best leaders are usually picked, and those who are picked are viewed by both themselves and their peers as being the best leaders. The chosen don’t want to risk failing, but feel they might fail by taking on such an unknown role.
These are the kinds of emotions that are often not spoken, but always felt. Many of the messages you deliver during the first 90 days will fall in this category of high complexity and high emotionality. This category impacts your communications plan because these messages must be communicated much differently than messages in the other three categories.
Table 12.1 summaries this model with communications tips for each quadrant.
Table 12.1 Communications Matrix, a Guide for Deciding the Type and Frequency of Communication
Creating Special Communication Systems
Companies customarily use their usual communication avenues to communicate the impending initiative, but sometimes it may be suitable to develop new communication programs to augment the more established ways. For example, in 1995, the engineered material sector of AlliedSignal started a program called “Winning Together.” Winning Together was a simple program that proved to be quite effective. The program had three objects, as follows:
1. Establish the Six Sigma metrics throughout the sector.
2. Educate and communicate the Six Sigma program and tools.
3. Recognize success.
Soon after launching the Winning Together program, each factory had a Winning Together board installed at the reception area of the site. This board showed the status of the site’s program on several metrics:
• Six Sigma Metrics
• Rolled Throughput Yield (RTY)
• Cost of Poor Quality (COPQ)
• Capacity Productivity (C-P)
• Customer Satisfaction (On-time delivery)
• Safety (OSHA metrics)
• Business Metrics
• Sales
• Income
and presented the status of each metric using red and green traffic lights. A green light displayed if you were better than goal, and a red light displayed if you were not. If a site got a threshold amount of green lights, then everyone at the site was eligible for special prizes and gifts. Figure 12.1 shows how the Winning Together board was linked to the goals of Six Sigma.
Figure 12.1 The Winning Together board that shows the status on several metrics for a manufacturing plant.
The Winning Together program had the purposes of communicating Six Sigma goals (scoreboards), getting everyone involved (monthly meetings), and recognizing success (quarterly recognition). This was a process and system developed specifically to tie Six Sigma to everyday life on site. Figure 12.2 shows a status board used in the sector operating reviews.
Figure 12.2 A status board for the divisions of the engineered materials sector of AlliedSignal.
The Winning Together program was specific to Six Sigma, but would have worked with any initiative. The program was implemented quickly, and at least one plant manager lost his job when he refused to put up a Winning Together board in his plant. The plants took the program a step further. In the cafeteria of many of the sites, all the Six Sigma projects and project teams were put on the cafeteria wall with the goals that the projects impacted. This was an excellent way to get visibility on the project work.
The engineered materials sector of AlliedSignal used a wide variety of communication methods as well. After each class of Black Belts was completed, color posters were developed to include a project summary and a picture of the Black Belt who lead the project. These posters were shown at the sector headquarters in Morristown, NJ, and then sent to the Black Belt. Communication kits were sent out periodically and large leadership conferences focused on Six Sigma were held frequently.
The Message
I referred to John Kotter’s stages for change in Chapter 3, “Six Sigma Launch Philosophy.” Of the eight stages, the fourth stage is titled, “Communicating the Change Vision.” Kotter defines seven principles in communicating the change vision:
1. Simplicity—Low word count; no jargon.
2. Metaphor, analogy, and example—Create a verbal picture or a physical picture.
a. Fred Poses, when President of the engineered material sector at AlliedSignal, created the sports car, the Viper, as the symbol of Six Sigma. Driving that car up the hill to world class results. He gave a few employees a chance to drive a Viper pending dramatic results.
3. Multiple forums—Use every forum available. Create new forums if necessary.
4. Repetition—Classic communication technique. Even Shakespeare used it in his drama.
5. Leadership by example—Emotional investment really counts.
6. Explanation of seeming inconsistencies—”We did TQM, so why Six Sigma?” One company used the motto, “Six Sigma puts the brains into TQM.”
7. Give and Take—Two-way communication is always good. Elevator speeches, short speeches that capture the essence of Six Sigma, are great.
One of the best messages I ever heard was from the president of a medium-sized chemical company at the executive kickoff. He listed three current metrics, tracked by the organization enterprise-wide, where they stood and where they were going to be by year’s end. They were as follows:
• Warranty returns: from 1.5 to 0.2 percent
• Overall process yields: from 82 to 88 percent
• On-time delivery: from 97.5 to >99 percent
He further went on to say that by doing all of these, the organization would grow in customer orders and have higher profits, and the previous three-year trend of layoffs could be stopped or reversed. He really had everyone’s attention at that point. Each of his main goals was grounded in data, backed up with customer surveys and employee surveys. He had done the hard work of preparing in great detail to deliver a simple message.
• The Message
• Who
• Each function and level in the organization gets the same message.
• The leaders of each function should absolutely be required to deliver the message in person to their charges.
• Timing in terms of organizational hierarchy may be required, but do not let the message get distorted by word of mouth.
• A written, bulleted message will anchor the gist of the message and prevent distortion as it passes from person to person and from level to level within your organization.
• The Six-Sigma rollout message must state specifically what is expected overall and then in detail what will happen.
• This is the part of the message that must be succinctly captured at the beginning and then explained in reasonable detail so each part of the organization can see the part they will play.
• When
• The timing of the message needs to be considered from several viewpoints.
• Who needs to know about this and when do they need to hear it?
• Obviously the organizational leadership needs to know, but they may want to be part of drafting the message.
• In the latter case, you may elect to make that part of an executive kickoff session deliverable.
• In the former case, think through what your external reality is telling you and how you wish to confront it. Then get that message out to your top leaders right away.
• Where
• Where should this message be delivered? Consider that the most effective place to deliver it is at the workplace and shop floor.
• Company-wide meetings are appropriate venues, especially if an annual or quarterly meeting is scheduled in the near term.
• If you want extraordinary results from this effort, unplanned visits in person will let people know just how extraordinary this effort will be!
• How and How Much
• Everyone will want to know exactly how this rollout is planned.
• How much commitment do you personally have for this initiative?
• People will commit only as much as they see their leader committing to Six Sigma. They will be wondering exactly how much effort, resources, and time you are expecting from them.
• Be as precise as you can be here—how many Belts are to be trained?
a. How much time will they be spending on projects?
b. Full time or part time?
c. How much savings are expected from each project?
e. How soon will the program get started?
• Burning Platform or Burning Desire?
• Every leader knows his or her organization’s culture. What is your culture?
a. Do people seem happy and motivated when it comes to new initiatives or changes?
b. Or are there past instances when things have not gone so well with change efforts?
• As a leader, you must assess whether your organization’s external reality is one where change must be driven immediately or whether you are doing this to improve faster than your nearest competitor.
• If it is a “burning platform,” then that must be part of the message delivered.
• If it is a desire to continue a string of successful changes within the company, then that must be highlighted.
• Either way, the message must be stated in a positive way, with a good vision of where you are leading the organization. A powerful vision, with a positive message about how to get there, is a great motivator.
• Market Challenge and Vision for the Future
• Current and perceived future market challenges be included in the message.
• The Ford Automotive Company, many years ago, had a message that showed how once an automobile company slipped to fourth or fifth place in the U.S. market, it was on the path to extinction. Coupled with such a message was no doubt a path to changing the company.
• Ford has changed dramatically in the past five years. Their trucks and SUVs own a significant market share, in spite of European and Japanese challenges. Their factories are both flexible and efficient.
• Their designs are driven by the use of common subassemblies, architectures, and platform planning. These approaches help make Ford a formidable competitor in their marketplace, rising to market challenges.
The following is an example of the message sent by the Executive Team to the senior leadership of the company. It is simple and exciting and certainly gets the deployment requirement out front.
Six Sigma Program Deployment
• To achieve our goals, we must:
• Believe—We have a great opportunity.
• Find—Be thankful but not embarrassed.
• Communicate—Make it visible.
• Deploy—Put it in the hands of our people.
• Execute—Focus, focus, focus.
• Track—Use the new measures.
• Reward—Recognize higher performance.
Each leader must communicate the company’s market challenges and their personal vision for the future. The vision must be communicated in simple language that translates easily across all organizational levels, to everyone in the company. The vision must be positive, as people are drawn to something positive that is reality based. Fantasy is for the movies, and the moment anyone believes a vision is more fiction than fact based, you will have lost them.
The Media
Paint the future state in as much detail as possible, and you should be able to clearly describe the steps to get there. Kouzes and Posner postulate that leaders live their lives in reverse. They know exactly where the organization will be in the future, and then walk backwards in time to develop the steps necessary to get there. So make certain your vision is positive, detailed, and with enough motivational facts to get people moving. Finally, deliver it with high energy in your personal style to show your commitment. Now let’s take a look at some media for communications.
• The Media
• Intranet
1. You may want to post your initial communication of Six Sigma and the planned rollout on your company intranet, if you have one.
2. Update it monthly or at least quarterly with progress to plan comments.
3. This is a great place to showcase those early successes to continue developing a vision of how it is changing the company and exactly what progress looks like.
4. Some people need to see concrete results or case examples before they can understand fully what value Six Sigma can bring to your organization.
• Publications
1. If your company does regular newsletters to employees and stockholders, this is a great forum to showcase some key messages, both initial and progress updates.
• The Chairman’s or President’s Message
1. If you regularly communicate in these forums, Six Sigma must be a significant part of it.
2. It cannot be a casual mention, and it should be listed first above all else if you want people to sit up and take notice.
3. Bob Galvin of Motorola would sit down in company reviews and leave after the Six Sigma and Quality portions of the reviews were completed. People got the message of priority.
• Video
1. A professionally done video done by the CEO or senior executive is effective.
2. Jack Welch was known for his video performance at the beginning of GE’s Six Sigma deployment.
• Briefing Meetings
1. Briefing meetings lead by the site leadership are effective for their face-to-face venue.
2. Meetings should be carefully scripted with professionally developed briefing materials.
3. Audience and frequency of meetings should be carefully considered.
• Recognition Events
1. Companies have had special events to honor participants.
2. Poster events—teams bring project posters and are available for questions and answers.
3. AlliedSignal Fifth Session—all Black Belts in training were invited to a celebratory session one month after their training was completed.
Communication Plans
Early in the deployment of Six Sigma, a communication plan is developed to cover the first six months of the launch. A plan for a single site might be fairly simple. Here is an example of one:
Six Sigma Communication Plan; Local Organization
[Week 0] Internal communication (newsletter).
[Week 1] Meeting review (every week); metrics/goals definition for the plant/area.
• Project definition (who, when, how).
• Review project plan and metrics (due dates).
• Internal communication (newsletter).
• Initiate safety investigation group.
• External communication between plants/areas.
• Start safety communication boards (plant/area entrance).
• Each team can use other persons to meet the goals.
[Week 2] Internal communication (newsletter and publish project schedule on site).
• Hands-on project implementation.
• Review metrics accuracy.
• Prioritization, accountability.
• Safety investigation group project.
• Meeting review (every week).
[Week 3] Internal communication (newsletter and publish metrics results on site).
• External communication.
• Meeting review (every week).
[Week 4] Internal communication (newsletter and publish metrics results on site).
• External communication (boards of directors).
• External communication between plants.
• Safety investigation group results.
• Recognition to the new Six Sigma personnel.
• Meeting review (every week).
A team drafts the communication, and the team includes at minimum the PR folks and the HR folks. I tend to think of the questions I want to answer before launching a communications plan, such as the following:
1. What results do I want from the communication?
2. How will I know that the communication was successful?
• Metrics (defined before the communication goes out)
• Method for capturing and analyzing the metric data
3. What do I need to convey in the communication to achieve these results?
• What information will the team need to know to achieve success?
i. Strategy
ii. Business plan
iii. Timing
iv. Value network
v. The framework for:
1. Identifying and responding to customer needs
2. Solving problems
3. Gathering input
4. Reacting to competition
5. Striving for strategic and business goals (revenue, profit, cash flow, etc.)
• Roles and responsibilities
• Reward and recognition plan
4. When putting together the communication package, consider an advertising campaign:
Herb Krugman of GE suggests that a minimum of three exposures per customer is required to impact the customer (they either act on it, get irritated with it, or forget it). The first exposure is unique. A “What is it?” cognitive response dominates the reaction. The second exposure produces several effects: “I’m interested” or “I’m not interested” are among them. The third exposure constitutes a reminder. The draft process for doing this is as follows:
• Introduce key concepts on launch and promotional planning.
• Review targeting and positioning considerations.
• Discuss management and statistical tools available to prepare for launch activities.
• Just as with preparing sales teams for a new product or campaign, your team/employees
• Are likely to be the greatest skeptics.
• Already have
• Their own ideas.
• Their own experiences.
• Their own biases on what will and will not work.
• Will typically do what they believe is best to maximize their concept of success.
1. Positioning—Create a unique place for the program in the employee’s mind.
• Message—What we need to say to communicate positioning.
• Use words to tell the story.
• Includes data when appropriate.
• Don’t confuse things by trying to look at graphic images at the same time you are developing “voices” for the message.
• Develop a “best guess,” and then refine the message to gain the team’s mind (buy-in).
• Focus on what the team needs to hear/know.
1. Decide which “elements” to include.
• Start with the positioning concept.
• Add important elements from the product profiling efforts.
2. Decide the emphasis for each element.
• Emphasis (weight) affects how well it will be retained.
• Decrease or increase emphasis by adding or subtracting specific details, data, and so on.
• Use team/customer scoring methods to decide the emphasis on the already determined elements.
3. Decide the order of the elements.
• Don’t always follow traditional wisdom.
• Get your main point(s) of difference across first, then follow with other important elements.
4. Decide the use of supporting data for the elements.
• Use data judiciously in promotion.
• Avoid information overload.
• Use detailed, reliable, credible data only to support KEY message elements.
• Reserve other data for back-up/follow-up materials.
2. Communication has been done right when the employees/teams
• Demonstrate clear understanding of the communication
• Can provide overall comments about the communication and surrounding information.
• Can identify and relate to each and every element.
• Clear comprehension of positioning.
• Relevance to processes, programs, and deliverables.
• Believable program differentiation.
• Appropriateness of documentation presented.
• High interest in program.
• Understanding of how/when to implement the program.
Finally, even the Black Belts and Green Belts need to know how to communicate. Here is an example of Black Belt project drivers. These are the communication suggestions that the Black Belts will receive during their Black Belt training.
Black Belt project drivers:
• Recognize team often and publicly.
• Put team picture on the wall.
• Keep them apprised of outcome of trials.
• Schedule team for presentations to plant leadership.
• Keep their current activities on the wall in area.
• Include the team in celebration of success.
• Give tangible item of membership (hat, jacket).
• Send thank-you letter home to share with family.
Elevator Speeches. An effective way to communicate a change initiative is the elevator speech. When we presented sample agendas for leadership workshops in Chapter 10, “Creating Six Sigma Executive and Leadership Workshops,” there was usually a section set aside to develop the elevator speech. This speech is short and simple. If you get on an elevator at the top floor of the corporate headquarters, and the CEO gets on the elevator with you and asks, “Tell me what you think of Six Sigma,” you have until the elevator gets to the ground floor to make your point. Consistent elevator speeches enhance the chances the ideas will be repeated a lot and consistently.
When working at AlliedSignal, I always had two elevator speeches ready: (1) the status on the Six Sigma deployment and (2) recent financial results. Here are some actual examples of some Six Sigma elevator speeches.
Six Sigma Example Elevator Speech #1
• The Right Metrics
• Customer satisfaction
• Defects per unit or rolled throughput yield
• Cost of poor quality
• Cycle time/rate
• The Right Projects
• Close the gap between baseline and process entitlement
• Aggressive project review structure
• The Right People
• Champions—catalyst for change
• Master Black Belts—internal technical experts
• Black Belts, Green Belts
• The Right Roadmap and Tools
• Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control
• The Right Results
• $$ to the bottom line—measured by financial group
Six Sigma Example Elevator Speech #2
• Why—Reduce variability in all processes to achieve the AOP and SBP while providing breakthrough business results.
• Champions, Master Black Belts, Black Belts, and Green Belts.
• How
• Plan, Train, Apply, Review.
• Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control.
• Where—Every business; every function.
• When—The train has already left the station.
Six Sigma Example Elevator Speech #3
• Fosters “one-company” vision.
• Provides common approach, language, and methodology across all companies and functions:
• Step-by-step common language roadmap.
• Design, manufacturing, and services common tools.
• Ensures focus on breakthrough performance.
• Infrastructure:
• Reviews at Champion, Plant, and Executive levels.
• Champion and Master Black Belt network.
• Project-specific action learning with review.
Six Sigma Example Elevator Speech #4
Our Six Sigma Commitment to Drive
• Growth
• Understanding the voice of the customer
• Value proposition
• Faster technology development
• Faster product commercialization
• Cost/Productivity
• Quality improvements
• Cost of poor quality
• Capacity improvement (without capital)
• Payables
• Receivables
• Inventory
The communication of the change initiative is a challenge. But your company has probably done this before with different initiatives. Some of them were well communicated and some not. Replay those successfully communicated initiatives and use those initiatives as your planning starting point. Topics for your initial communications plans over the first three or four months might include the following:
• Six Sigma linked to strategy
• Roles and responsibilities:
• Initiative Champion
• Deployment Champion
• Project Champion
• Black Belt
• Green Belt
• Master Black Belt
• Training programs
• Training plan
• Six Sigma methodology
• Projects:
• Selection
• Prioritization
• Tracking
• Six Sigma related to previous initiatives
Communicating Six Sigma has a learning curve built in. The leadership of the company must understand the basics of Six Sigma, and training events early in the deployment are designed to do that. Remember: Be simple, be creative, be visual, and be repetitive. Holding to those principles will get you there.