Why is it important to carefully choose your formally recognised improvement projects? The answer is quite simple.
In order for you to complete a project you need time and resources. Yet the number one complaint I hear from project leaders all around the world is they can’t get that time or those resources.
Participants in my training will have heard me talk about the setting up of an “operating agreement” at the start of a project to help avoid this problem.
The other part of the solution is to choose projects correctly.
A Business Improvement Manager in a major corporation once told me; if you want leaders to allocate time resources to any business improvement initiative, it must do three things:
- #1 – It must focus on work that is recognised by the leader as important,
- #2 – It must lead to results the leader values, and
- #3 – It must generate actual and quantifiable benefits ‘quickly’.
By working on projects that are linked to the strategic objectives of the business or the leader’s KPIs, those projects will be connected to the business plan.
And anything that helps a leader deliver on their part of the business plan will be a source of motivation to allocate time and resources that are essentially scarce.
The General Manager of business improvement in Telstra was on the mark when she told me back in 2004 that choosing projects linked to the strategic objectives of the business is an important element in managing the wrong perception that lean six sigma or business improvement is a separate activity, and not an integral part of the business.
Choose your projects wisely.
SOURCE – This is an extract from a George Lee Sye written lean six sigma publication. His work forms a complete lean six sigma body of knowledge now used by business improvement professionals around the world in both classroom and online Lean Six Sigma training. More information about George’s published works is available here – http://georgeleesye.com/books