Hiring a CI Leader? Here are some skills to look out for.

With organizations being pressured for more stringent performance indicators, cost control practices continuously coming in and higher competition from similar market players, Lean Six Sigma is being advocated to design and support newer ways of running day to day businesses. Be it a manufacturing process or a transactional process, Lean Six Sigma is a result driven, proven methodology to assist towards any Operational Excellence roadmap. The DMAIC problem solving method to reduce variation together with Lean tools used for waste reduction creates the right platform for any continuous improvement required.

Lean Six Sigma is a robust business system that helps to understand gaps in the process, streamlining focus driven projects to bring you closer to achieving target process and business metrics. It is a specialized field that plenty may venture into but not many Lean Six Sigma practitioners are able to deliver what is written on their job description. Each organization is unique in its method of operating and culture, yet there is a significant similarity in how processes within an organization is developed and operated.?As the CI Leader, one of the core skills is to be able to assess any business process and understand the gaps as quickly as possible and knowing which direction to take to get to the next level.

In today’s continuous improvement environment, a combination of Lean and Six Sigma knowledge is necessary as these two elements intertwine when striving for process excellence. Six Sigma nor Lean Manufacturing alone is good enough to execute the Operations Excellence Model. Today it is common in the market, to find many talents that are either strong in Lean or strong in Six Sigma, a combination of both these skills is however, slowly being developed. A Lean Six Sigma candidate is not cheap to come by, this is a specialized skill and ensuring we hire the right candidate is crucial not just for the investment made to have a dedicated resource but to ensure the hired candidate is able to deliver.?

A technical background with certifications in Lean and Six Sigma is no longer the only criteria for hiring your next best Lean Six Sigma candidate. Yes, that's the basic requirement but beyond the paper qualification, there are certain soft skills that play a critical part to ensure a strong and well-rounded Lean resource is recruited. Below are some of the core skills to look out for when hiring your next Lean Six Sigma candidate.

1.??????Process Minded Individuals

Recently I did a training on developing Problem Statements and one key take away is to always approach problem solving from a process perspective. Projects may start at a corporate level, company level or functional level, but once you get to the heart of it, you need to break it down to a process level in order to get baselines established, measure performances and take actionable steps for improvement. Regardless of industry, business model, product line or technology, the trick is to be able to see it from a process mindset. If you are not able to break it down to a process level, Lean Six Sigma will fail before it even starts. Is the candidate you are hiring able to do this? The ability to walk through any part of your operation and being able to break it down to a process level?

2.??????Keen Eye for Detail

When you want someone to deep dive into processes and figure out where are the gaps, you cannot afford to have someone who looks at things from a surface level. Anyone can do that. You can do that. You need someone who can go deep, ask the right questions, look at things from all angles and put the pieces together. Crunching numbers, analyzing data, running excel spreadsheets, studying process parameters, performing an effective Gemba all require an eye for detail. Without this skill, improvements made are superficial and may not be sustainable. Either a significant improvement may not be achieved or within a couple of months, the processes go back to its original state.

?3.??????Clear and Concise Thought Process

Have you noticed how we have thoughts in our minds swirling all the time, yet it is not easy to put these thoughts into words that can be understood by others? Thinking about something is not the same as talking about something. Ask 5 people to look at a process and have them explain to you what they have just seen and each one will give you a different answer. Each of us operates from a different side of the coin. Our skills, knowledge, past experiences, belief systems, communication style, leadership method and confidence level influences what we say. Transforming what we have observed, studying it from a Lean Six Sigma perspective, analyzing it and producing an outcome that any layman can understand is not an easy feat. Yet it is an important factor for the Lean Six Sigma leader to be able to articulate and communicate in a manner that is understood by different levels of the organization.

4.??????An Inquisitive Mind

Recently I did a 5 Why analysis for a project that I was working on. Have you been involved in a 5 Why analysis or even tried creating a Fishbone or Ishikawa diagram? One of the hardest things to do is to get to the next why. We tend to stop after one or two questions and think we are done with the root cause analysis. Yet, for someone who is inquisitive, they will want to keep asking why. They are never satisfied with the answers and keep going until they stop and say yes, this is the real root cause of the problem. It is the same when we drive Lean Six Sigma, this inquisitive mind is required to question status quo, challenge teams to look at different ways of doing things and drive a different level of improvement to an organization. The Lean Six Sigma leader needs to be able to steer the team to question the way things are done and see it from ways never seen before.

?5.??????Hands-on Individual

One of the biggest concerns upon hiring a Lean Six Sigma candidate is the lack of hands-on involvement when running improvement projects. A good Lean Six Sigma candidate is not a Project Leader who tells the team what to do and getting others to do it. Hands on involvement to go see the process, making observations, asking questions directly to process owners, getting involved in the data analysis, being present when improvement actions are taken are some of the abilities of a strong Lean Six Sigma leader. Without this involvement, it will be hard to get the team’s commitment nor getting them to make changes needed for improvement. A hands-on Lean Six Sigma leader also gains the trust from the team by showing an understanding of real concerns and challenges the team faces.

?6.??????Ability to Understand Business Needs

The last decade of Lean and Six Sigma has focused on improvements in lead time reductions, process time reductions, waste removal, reducing variations, improving quality levels, supply chain improvements and cost savings. Today, with the integration of Lean Six Sigma, a business model is being created to drive operation costs down, digitalization and creating robust and flexible processes. With this, the Lean Six Sigma leader can no longer be someone only skilled in one field or line of work. Someone with various backgrounds, with a combination of work experiences both in operations and non-operations makes for a stronger Lean Six Sigma candidate. Exposure to financial terms, a strategic thinking mindset, understanding company culture, a good grasp on an organization’s vision and mission is needed for the Lean Six Sigma leader to work hand in hand with leadership to steer organizations to the next level.

Leaders know business needs but may not have the right tools to drive improvements at a process level. This is where the Lean Six Sigma professional comes in to apply the right improvement tool to close the gaps. The ability of the Lean Six Sigma leader to understand and convert leadership expectations into process improvement opportunities that makes sense at different levels of resources using Lean Six Sigma methodologies will be the game changer.

This is the value the right Lean Six Sigma leader can bring to your organization.

So, take the time and find the right candidate for this important role! ??