Innovation Black Belt

One of my clients recently interviewed and rejected a job applicant who was a six sigma "black belt". The role they were interviewing was for someone to work in the strategic projects area. I was really struck by the reason I was given for not hiring this individual. The manager said, "We are worried that the six sigma "black belt" will introduce practices that squeeze out creativity and over-engineer our organisation."

This echoes the 3M experience, where the BusinessWeek suggested that six sigma had removed some of 3M's renowned creativity and innovation. Of course, they also acknowledge that it's introduction helped improve the profitability of the organisation.

So we are left with something of a dilemma: lean or innovative. What I fail to understand is why we can't have both lean and innovative?

The process of becoming lean in and of itself can be seen as innovative to a bloated, inefficient organisation. What is required during this transition is to simultaneously change the culture of the organisation to be one that grasps novelty and experimentation. In introducing a transition like this the risk is that we inadvertently change the culture to one of "lean" above everything else. Where squeezing out all defects removes any chance of further creativity, variability and novelty.

We may irreparably damage the organisation in this process.

We should instead regard the process as a reason to encourage change and experimentation, where "lean and defect free" is a goal of some of the experiments that the organisation undertakes. Others goals of experiments could be looking for new products or markets. We need to do this deeply throughout the organisation and listen to what our staff are telling us. In so doing, we encourage all staff to take seriously their role and accountability for organisational goals.

We need to use these opportunities to embed the appropriate dynamic (learning) capabilities into the organisation. It is these capabilities that will ultimately give the organisation the "stretch" to be able to be both "lean" and innovative.

We are then setting the scene for more dramatic capabilities in the years to come. Imagine, what we could accomplish if we had the majority of our staff as innovation black belts.