Black Belt Six Sigma: Introduction to the New Six Sigma

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Motorola University developed the New Six Sigma because we had to. We could see our Motorola businesses as well as our customers and suppliers struggling with the same critical issues. We knew that the classic Six Sigma methodology—focus on defects and variability reduction—had served our business managers quite effectively during much of the 1990s, and we had helped our customers and suppliers apply Six Sigma to dramatically improve their business processes. But we could also see that Six Sigma was losing its relevance to many of our business leaders. They perceived the methodology as too complex, effective only in manufacturing and engineering environments, and too slow in yielding results. We could also see, however, that many of our leaders had taken the important elements of Six Sigma—like understanding customer requirements, continuously driving process improvement, and using statistical analysis to drive fact-based decision making—and moved them into a broader, integrated approach that flawlessly executed their full business strategies. The New Six Sigma builds on the power of the Six Sigma methodology we pioneered in the 1980s and introduced to many businesses in the 1990s, yet it benefits from the lessons we learned as we helped our customers and suppliers implement the methodology.

The new Six Sigma is an overall business improvement method.

The New Six Sigma solves the paradox that leaders find themselves in today of attempting to simultaneously achieve short-term financial gains through fast business improvement projects while building future capability in both key talent and critical processes.

By integrating tools and processes such as scorecards, business process redesign, high-performance teams, and continuous monitoring of key business metrics, the New Six Sigma provides a practical approach and useful tools for leaders looking to drive balanced execution.

Table 2.1 outlines the four key leadership principles, discerned through studying organizations that successfully implemented Six Sigma. These leadership principles anchor the New Six Sigma.1

Table 2.1. Leadership Principles of the New Six Sigma
Key Leadership Principle	Description
Align	Using the performance excellence business model (based on the Malcolm Baldrige criteria), link customer requirements to business strategy and core business processes. Create strategy execution targets, stretch goals, and appropriate measures. The goal is to provide sustainable, measurable bottom-line results that drive business goal achievement.
Mobilize	Empower teams to drive improvements using projects selected by executives, project management methodology, and Six Sigma methods. Organize team efforts with clear charters, success criteria, and rigorous reviews. Provide teams with just-in-time training and empower them to act.
Accelerate	Employ an action learning methodology by combining structured education with real-time project work and coaching to quickly bridge the gap from learning to doing. The motivation to act is perishable yet essential for driving projects to timely results.
Govern	Drive the execution of strategy by managing scorecard metrics. Structured review processes involve reviewing dashboards of results as well as drilling into process and project details where needed. Barriers lift when leaders share best practices.

The New Six Sigma integrates best-practice processes with tools designed to help leaders in driving their business strategy for dramatic short-term business results while building sustained future capability.

Table 2.2 shows some of the best practices that were included in the New Six Sigma methodology.

Table 2.2. Best Practices of the New Six Sigma
Best Practice Process or Tool	Definition or Purpose
Voice of the Customer (VOC)	Six Sigma methods translate abstract desires from customers into concrete specifications and organizational requirements. Leaders use these data to transform the strategic goals and processes so that they deliver value.
Balanced Scorecard	Executive teams actively build scorecards to quickly achieve alignment on their organization's vision, mission, strategic objectives, breakthrough initiatives, and the metrics used for monitoring progress. The scorecard itself provides the vehicle for clear and concise communication of vision, mission, objectives, metrics, and initiatives to the entire organization.
Accelerated Business Improvement	Business process redesign provides the tools that enable the creation or redesign of the key business processes essential for delivering on the customer's expectations and achieving the goals articulated in the scorecard.
High-Performance Teams	High-performance teams are customer-focused, cross-functional teams with clear charters used to complete the projects most critical to the business improvement effort.
Six Sigma Black Belt Teams	Six Sigma Black Belt teams are: Employed against highly complex projects that require advanced statistical tools. Used when an advanced tool set is required to achieve: Process improvement. Process development. Product or service improvement. Product or service development.
Blitz Teams	Blitz Teams are employed when: It's clear what needs to improve. Detailed data analysis is not required. The consequences of not taking action outweigh the risks of making mistakes. Leaders are ready to support action.
Integrated Business Review	Executives use a dashboard—a summary of the status of metrics—to review the progress toward goals. Leaders drill into details when stoplights on the dashboard indicate unfavorable trends or goals. Details include process status and projects that aim to improve processes.

The next section uses the New Six Sigma methodology to provide leaders with a practical approach to achieving rapid business improvement while building sustainability into their business systems. It builds leaders' understanding of the four key insights (Align, Mobilize, Accelerate, Govern), and it guides them through the use of New Six Sigma practices and tools by providing real-world examples.

To clarify these concepts, we have combined Motorola's experiences with those of the many other companies who have practiced the New Six Sigma over the past few years. The case study that follows demonstrates how novel leadership principles and innovations make the New Six Sigma significantly better than the original.