Lean Six Sigma For Leaders

1Introduction

Why this Book?

Another book about Lean Six Sigma?

Ah but this is different, it's about leadership and it is definitely not a technical book about the dark arts of black belts or advanced statistics. We hope you'll find it helpful no matter what kind of role you are in. We hope it will make you think that maybe there is more to this than you had thought. We hope you can put some of the ideas into practice. Come and join the party!

Let's start by trying out one of our favourite Lean Six Sigma tools, ‘negative brainstorming’ on that very subject – leadership.

If you haven't discovered it yet, this ‘tool’ (as Lean Six Sigma practitioners like to call techniques which can be employed to help facilitate workshops and the like) is really good fun – and it works.

So how do you use negative brainstorming?

In our experience there are two main steps. Firstly, grab a flipchart and pen, and say to the group ‘Okay, so describe what good leadership looks like.’

This is a tough question and is likely to stall quickly, so before they get bogged down, say ‘Let's turn the question around, what are the characteristics of really bad leadership?’

This inevitably creates a few chuckles around the room and immediately engages everyone including the negative diehards. Everyone seems to know what BAD leadership is like and they will have no trouble describing examples of it.

Here are a few examples from workshops we have run with senior executives:

• Being a poor communicator
• Dictating ...