Principles of Change Management in Six Sigma

Involvement is a big factor with change management and should be the first thing considered when you are thinking about making changes to anything within an organization. Always think about the people involved. If you are going to make a change to a piece of software used by several departments, then all of these departments will be involved. A company works together to reach the same goal. Although, not everyone is performing the same tasks, change management affects everyone. Accounting might want a new piece of software they think is easy to use. Maybe the information technology department that needs to support it doesn't know how to use it. Not only would this affect the IT department but it would require the staff to go to training as well.

The current state is very important also with change management. The current situation includes the problems you are trying to remedy. Change management usually occurs when you are trying to make improvements to a system, as is the case with Six Sigma. Improvements might include saving the business money or time running processes. When reviewing the current system and processes, determine the positive factors for the change and how the processes will be improved.

The overall goal of 'where you want to be' needs to be clear within a change management project. These goals should be determined and outlined after evaluating the current business situation. The new processes should be defined and agreed upon with the people who will be running them. Determine exactly where you want the business to be, a time frame for getting there, why you want to make the changes, the steps needed to get there, and the positive measures for implementing the changes.

The next principle to change management is planning the development. Once you have determined where you want to be, you can lay out the entire plan for achieving the results. This should be specific to every person and department involved in the entire change management project. The different milestones determined should be appropriate and achievable. Don't set goals too difficult to reach.

Communication is the final principle of change management. Communication should occur at every level of the project and it should involve everyone. Communication allows people to feel enabled and it helps facilitate the involvement with everyone. Never hold back information about a project during change management because it can cause people not to trust you. If communication is thorough, everyone will feel more motivated to work toward the final goal.

When an entire company makes the decision to implement Six Sigma Processes within their day-to-day operations, most employees panic. They are most often already overwhelmed in their current duties, and see Six Sigma as just another 'thing' to add to their daily to-do list. Change management is key when it comes time to implement this change. As long as everyone sees Six Sigma Training and certification as a positive change, and one that will benefit everyone involved, it will be a much easier transition for everyone।

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Sourcing In China - Change Management Must Be Part Of The Initiative

More and more Western company leaders decide to start sourcing goods from China and take advantage of its low production costs. But we see many of these China sourcing initiatives without a strong Change Management part: They usually underestimate the time and efforts needed to explain, train, demonstrate and convince employees to shift to Chinese suppliers.

The change is drastic indeed: Purchasing, Quality, Engineering, Logistics, Design departments organized their work around the relations with their "traditional" suppliers. The shift from "local sourcing" with this traditional supply base to "far sourcing" with new suppliers in China will dramatically affect the way they work:

Firstly, the Design Department must integrate new technical and economical constraints in the design of the next generation of products. The 3 major principles are:

-1 Parts with high added value and sub-assemblies are the ones bringing the best cost advantages when sourced in China.

-2 Production processes in China are different: Automatic production is replaced by a number of manual steps. It reduces capital investment and cost, increases production flexibility but tolerances are not as good as for an automated process.

-3 Parts with critical Intellectual Property shall be kept outside China.

Secondly, the Engineering Department used to rely on their traditional suppliers' superior engineering capabilities, expertise and capacity to innovate. Switching to a supplier which expertise is not as good means:

1- More work: New technical validations and support to the new Chinese suppliers

2- Due diligence: Thorough checks of all safety standards

Thirdly, in the Logistics Department, employees will have to start setting-up new flows coming from China and adapt to a new set of principles. Long transport time by containers may be a new constraint. Factory logistics teams deal with hundreds of issues a day, and new constraints are never welcome. For example, daily deliveries in returnable boxes are not an option when the producing factory is 10,000 kilometers away. The delivery cycle is obviously too long and the investment in boxes would be too large. But if this is the preferred delivery method, the Logistics Department will have to change its habits and adapt to new objectives.

Also, the Quality Department must re-examine its approach of supplier's quality:
The Quality of the purchased parts used to be sub-contracted to the suppliers: Quality objectives are included in the purchasing contracts and defective parts are sent back to where they come from. The buyers have nothing to do with the quality management of their suppliers. This approach does not work with far sourcing. Waiting for the parts to be delivered to check their quality would be too risky and costly. It takes time and resources, but buyers have no choice but to retake control of the quality management.

"You get what you inspect, not what you expect".

As an example, Shanghai General Motors has developed an army of Advanced Supplier Quality (ASQs) engineers, traveling 4 days a week to their suppliers' factories. Their role is to directly and constantly manage quality improvement plans.
However, for a Western company without a dedicated organization established locally, managing supplier's Quality on a regular basis can become problematic: Many of our customers come to us initially to solve Quality problems. Outsourced in-factory quality control and pre-delivery inspections is a common solution.

Finally, directly on the battle front, in the Purchasing Department, the buyers must also adapt their negotiation style and attitude.
One cannot go aggressive on price reduction targets to Chinese suppliers without giving anything in return. It is not only because of the Chinese business culture (you have to become good friends before signing a deal). If the outcome of the negotiation is not a win-win deal, the Chinese supplier might start finding ways to cut his production costs and regain his margin: Swap raw material to cheaper ones or sub-contract to another company. An unprofitable deal for the supplier usually damages the quality of the parts.

If confrontation seldom works, a supportive attitude towards a Chinese supplier generally pays off. Give practical advices, deliver simple trainings, and show your support where it is needed: Suppliers will keep a positive attitude and this will bring mutual benefits.

This is the founding concept of Supplier Development: A Supplier Development project usually starts when the owner of a Chinese company accepts the active support of his potential client over a period of time and engages his company in the implementation of all the best practices brought to him and his staff. In return, the buyer creates a tailor-made production facility for its parts, and a loyal supplier. After 6 months of weekly visits and workshops with the different departments, the Chinese factory dramatically improves and the production starts. This is certainly a large time and effort investment, but it pays off in sustainable cost advantage. Success stories such as BOSCH's or VALEO's tend to prove this is a good way to do Industrial Sourcing in China.

All these changes will be effective only if they happen concomitantly and as the China sourcing project makes progress. Such a challenge must be addressed by a company-wide Change Management project।

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Change Management - The Number 1 Contributor to Successful Change

I'm returning from teaching a change management course to managers and employees at a major financial institution that is currently going through a great deal of change. The company put 160 people through the training classes - a significant financial investment, including both time and money, to provide change management training to their employees.

The HR manager approaches me on the morning of the first day and asks,

"Was a management sponsor here to kick off the session?"

I shared with her that no one from their company kicked off the course. She rolled her eyes - her body language said everything.

Prosci, the industry leader in change management research, shows that the greatest contributor to change success is active and visible executive sponsorship (Prosci Benchmarking Report, 2007). I commend this company for recognizing the need to manage the 'people side of change' by seeking out change management training, and, they missed an incredible opportunity to show real leadership regarding the changes. A 10 minute kick-off from a senior leader to set the context for the changes would have been a powerful statement. In my experience, a good senior management kick-off covers and achieves the following:

1. Identify the business case for change Create awareness - why is the change needed? Treat people like adults and be straight up with the reality of the situation.

2. Acknowledge the difficult situation Change is hard whether it be job role changes or a reduction in work force. Be real and acknowledge the difficult situation.

3. Commit to lead with integrity and transparency through the process Set expectations about what will happen and when and the reason for the chosen process.

4. Communicate an inspiring future (vision piece) Communicate how these changes are going to contribute to a better future from various perspectives, including impact on: business, personal, society, customer, and working team.

5. Make a call to action Identify the call to action - what is it that you want employees to do with the information?

Later in the day I inquired about the changes the company was going through that lead them to invest in change management training. This company was working with a large consulting firm, paying even more money to them, to go through a 'delayering' process. The objective is to reduce the amount of management layers, meaning 20% of their managers would no longer have a job in a short while. In addition to the downsizing, they were overhauling their job roles, reporting structure, processes and tools under the mantra "Organizational Excellence." Major, major change was underway. Showing active and visible executive sponsorship at the beginning of the change management training sessions was a missed opportunity for this executive team।

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Change Management - Change Processes That Work For People

The traditional command control approach to organisational change invariably starts with the sponsorship of new initiatives from the top. Senior management then assemble a project team to develop the ideas - and these become a recommendation that is then sold to and eventually resisted by large sections of the wider organisation.

Sound familiar?

Yet another report - this time by UK based organisational performance, leadership development and executive coaching consultancy, Lane4 - provides compelling evidence that supports this perspective of consistent and persistent poor leadership and change management, in other words the failure of the traditional command-control leadership style.

Their global study shows that whilst nearly 90% of businesses had experienced major change in the preceding 24 months, less than 10% felt they had been really successful at change management.

Their findings were depressingly predictable and showed yet again that people factors and leadership ability were the most significant causes of failure - and occasional success.

Root causes of the failure can be traced to command-control leadership and management styles applied to change management, over-reliance on a project management process driven approach, basic lack of change management knowledge and skill, and management detachment.

In my view it is management detachment that is the real killer here as management detachment feeds the disconnection between senior management, "the big idea" and everyone else - especially those people at the frontline.

The resolution to these issues is very simple; it involves a change of style of leadership and the utilisation of different processes - namely processes that work for people.

Change processes that work for people are change processes that involve people from the outset and throughout the full life cycle of the initiative.

The Guiding Principles of Change Processes That Work For People

(1) Involve the informal networks and natural leaders, or what is also known as the "shadow organisation", that exists outside of the formal management power and influence structure and that comprises up to 75% of the organisation.

(2) Connect and communicate by facilitating and encouraging listening, dialogue and the building of trusting relationships.

(3) Create coalitions and communities for action.

(4) Generate, harness and focus the energies of these groups to solve problems, create a shared vision of the future and realise the benefits of that vision.

(5) Practice broadly democratic and participation-based principles with transparency and fairness.

In summary we are describing a command control structure that recognises that its primary role in a change initiative is to define the boundaries, objectives and focus of the wider participation and discussion, to be realistic about goals, and to apply these principles.

To find out more about "Change Processes That Work For People" please see: Change Management Templates.

Equip yourself to avoid the 70% failure rate of all change initiatives with this FREE download: Starting the Change Process

Stephen Warrilow, based in Bristol, works with companies across the UK providing specialist support to directors delivery significant change initiatives. Stephen has 25 years cross sector experience with 100+ companies in mid range corporate, larger SME and corporate environments.

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How to Manage Change - 8 Guiding Principles From John Kotter

There are many theories about how to manage change. Many come from change management guru, John Kotter, a professor at Harvard Business School. Kotter introduced his eight-step change process in his 1995 book,"Leading Change."

Step One: Create Urgency

Kotter suggests that for change to be successful, 75% of a company's management needs to "buy into" the change. So for change to happen there needs to be a shared a sense of urgency around the need for change.

And this will result from honest and open dialogue with your people about what's happening in your market and with your competition. If many people start talking about the change you propose, the urgency can build and feed on itself.

Step Two: Form a Powerful Coalition

To successfully persuade people that change is necessary takes strong leadership and the very visible support from key people within your organisation.

This isn't just about managing change - this has to be led and you have to be seen to lead it.

To lead change, you need to bring together a coalition, or team, of influential people whose power comes from a variety of sources, including job title, status, expertise, and political importance.

You can find effective change leaders at all levels within your organisation - they don't necessarily follow the traditional company hierarchy. It is important to get an emotional commitment from these key people as you build a team to support your change initiative.

Step Three: Create a Vision for Change

You need to create a clear coherent vision that people can grasp easily and remember and that can help everyone understand why you're asking them to do something.

When people have clarity about what you're trying to achieve, and why then you stand a greater chance of communicating with them

Step Four: Communicate the Vision

How effectively and consistently you share and communicate your vision will have a big influence on the success of your change initiative.

There will be resistance and competing messages from many other sources and influences within your organization so you need to communicate it frequently and powerfully, and embed it within everything that you do.

It's also extremely important to "walk the talk." What you do is far more credible than what you say. You have to demonstrate the kind of behaviour and attitudes that you want from your people.

Step Five: Remove Obstacles

There will be resistance to change. You need to identify it early and take steps to deal with it finding and resolving the root causes.

Put in place the structure for change, and continually check for barriers to it - especially with your organisational structure, job descriptions, and performance and compensation systems - it is vital that these are in line with your vision.

Step Six: Create Short-term Wins

Success breeds success - so early wins are very motivational and very important for morale and for overcoming resistance.

You can help achieve this by setting achievable and believable short-term targets.

This is very much in line with Ken Blanchard's ideas in "The One Minute Manager" of "catching them doing something right" [and praising them for it].

Step Seven: Build on the Change

Kotter argues that many change projects fail because victory is declared too early - he teaches that real and lasting change runs deep.

This is really all about building momentum and making continuous improvement an embedded part of your culture. In practice this means keeping things fresh with new ideas and regular review of what went right with each win identifying areas for improvement.

Step Eight: Anchor the Changes in Corporate Culture

Finally, to make any change stick, it should become part of the culture of your organisation as this is the biggest determinant of how people will behave.

It's also important that your company's leaders continue to support the change. This includes existing staff and new leaders who are brought in. If you lose the support of these people, you might end up back where you started.

In my opinion there are many aspects to Kotter's 8 principles of how to manage change that resonate with, and are totally consistent with, the holistic and wide view perspective of a programme based approach to change management.

For more on this: " John Kotter - Leading Change "

I invite you to take advantage of this FREE download: Starting the Change Process "

Find out the 3 main reasons for the 70% failure rate of all step change initiatives and how to avoid it. This FREE 29 page document offers a brief introduction to some of the key themes and key points that you need to consider in starting the change process.

Stephen Warrilow, based in Bristol, works with companies across the UK providing specialist support to directors delivery significant change initiatives. Stephen has 25 years cross sector experience with 100+ companies in mid range corporate, larger SME and corporate environments.

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What Is Change Management?

You will be familiar with word "Change Management" if you are working within a large corporation or organization. Change management has been around for a while but this term has become very common among organizations and corporations that like to initiate changes to processes including both tasks and organizational culture. A change management is a set of processes that are employed to make sure that changes have been implemented in ordered, controlled and systematic way.

It is a basic skill in which business leaders and executives need to be competent. Only few work environments are known that can continue working without changes otherwise every business needs change due to technological awareness in world and high competition in market. It has been developed over a period of time. Business leaders use different models for making changes in their businesses. ADKAR model is one of most commonly known and followed change management models. This model defines five basic stages that must be kept in mind to make successful amendments in an organization. These stages include:

Awareness: Leaders must know what changes are needed and why.

Desire: All concerned members of organization must have motivation and desire to make changes in processes.

Knowledge: Organization must know what changes can be made and how?

Ability: An organization willing to change must have abilities and competencies to plan and implement it.

Reinforcement: All concerned people must be reinforced to sustain this and adopt new behaviors.

Basic Principles for Change Management

Change management is only possible if some specific principles are being followed. Here is information about basic principles that must be in knowledge of all managers and leaders:

• Different people will react differently on proposed changes

• Everyone has fundamental needs that should be considered

• Change may result in loss therefore business leaders should be courageous to accept it

• Expectations need to be managed realistically

• Courage to deal with fears

You need to know how these principles will be applied in change management.

• You can deal with different behaviors of concerned people by proper communication beforehand. Be open and honest about providing facts. Avoid being overoptimistic. Meet their openness needs but in way that they may not set unrealistic expectations.

• Make a communication strategy for large groups of people that ensure necessary information is efficiently and comprehensively disseminated to all people. Tell the story of change to everyone at same time. You can also arrange individual meetings to make strategies to deal with it. This will help leaders in dealing with individual behaviors.

• Give people a choice to make among proposed changes and be very honest about consequences.

• Give people time to express their reviews and support their decision making.

• Identify chances of losses. Define ways to replace the losses. This will help to overcome fears.

• Give individual opportunity to all involved people to express their concerns and satisfy them with potential facts.

Follow each principle while introducing any change in your organization to get optimum results from it. Try to develop change oriented attitude in your team.

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Project Scope Management - The Basic Principles

When a project manager is willing to accept all stakeholders' scope change requests to the detriment of other project objectives, we call this scope creep. However, if she is too conservative and tends to keep project scope fixed as defined in the original scope statement, she will poorly meet stakeholders' expectations. How can project managers resolve this dilemma?

Each project manager has her own practice to overcome this issue. What I would like to do in this article is to address some basic principles for effective scope management. Here, by basic principles I mean if you fail to apply them, you will fail to manage your project scope.

Project scope must be based on requirements

The scope statement includes deliverables that the project must produce to fulfill requirements. While requirements are written in business language, project deliverables are written in product-oriented language. Any change request regarding project deliverables must be preceded by a change in requirements.

You cannot add features that do not reflect any requirements. Many people do that just because they want their customers to be happy, or because there is time left until the deadline of a particular deliverable. This practice is referred to as gold plating.

The main reason for not practicing gold plating is that gold plating can increase your project risks in the following ways

Additional features may prevent the required functions to work properly. You may have to spend time for reworks if these additional features do not work. Additional features that are great in your opinion may not be so for other stakeholders.

There must be an integrated control over project scope

There are mostly always changes to scope during project. However, you must have an overall control over project scope. Here, by control we do not necessarily mean you must prevent changes. On the contrary, if changes are needed in order to fulfill current requirements that are more actual than the original requirements, those changes must be implemented. Controlling project scope includes

Understand the root-cause of changes to the project scope.

Identify tendency of changes and the risks associated with them.

Prevent unnecessary changes to the project scope.

Project scope must be regularly verified with project stakeholders

The produced deliverables must be verified with stakeholders to ensure that these deliverables do fulfill requirements. You can verify scope at each project milestone or whenever a key deliverable is completed. It is not necessary to wait until the end of the project to verify all deliverables.

By regularly verifying scope, you can ensure that

You do not produce deliverables that do not fulfill requirements.

Project stakeholders are informed about the project status; as a result they can give you timely feedbacks about deliverables.

Another reason for regular scope verification is that project scope statement includes assumptions and constraints, which may change significantly during project. If yo

u consider scope verification as a way to communicate with project stakeholders about project status, you can verify not only the deliverables, but also the assumptions and constraints. A change in assumptions and constraints may lead to a change in requirements or a change in the way project deliverables can fulfill these requirements.

Do you think that following these principles ensures effective scope management?

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