Lean Six Sigma For Leaders

3Measure for Leaders

THERE'S A MOMENT in the film The Matrix where the character Neo is offered a choice of two pills, red or blue.

After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill – the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill – you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. Remember: all I'm offering is the truth. Nothing more.

He has to choose between security and pretence (ignorance is bliss) or the painful truth of reality. Imagine this choice – a comfortable existence where you're safe, unaware of real dangers and can continue with normal habits, or a world where you're fully aware of the difficult truth and must navigate this to achieve freedom. There's no turning back. Welcome to the Measure phase!

The Measure phase is all about finding out the truth. This is achieved by understanding how the process currently works, and then understanding how well the process currently works.

For leaders this can be uncomfortable, as the tools and techniques used may present findings that are out of sync with the organisation's current understanding of performance, and will often highlight waste that couldn't be spotted through existing methods

Consider, for example, the scenario shown in Figure 3.1. Ten pieces of work are being passed through a simple checking process. (Note, we'll talk more about checking later!)

Check 1	Check 2	Check 3	Total
Good	3	4	2	9
Bad	7	3	1	11
Items ...