Lean Six Sigma Green Belt BookSteps to create a Go-to-market strategy for B2B companies for Business Growth

A Go-To-Market strategy is a plan for how you will bring your products or services to market and reach your target customers. It includes elements such as product positioning, target market, distribution channels, sales and marketing tactics, and key performance indicators. 

A good GTM can directly improve the chances of the overall company’s business growth rate.

Here are some steps you can take to create a GTM strategy for your company:

• Understand your target market: It’s essential to have a clear understanding of your target customers, including their needs, pain points, and buying habits. This information can help you to identify the most effective ways to reach and engage with them.
• Define your product positioning: This is how you want your product or service to be perceived by your target customers. It should be based on your understanding of your target market and should take into account your competitive landscape.
• Identify distribution channels: Determine which channels will be most effective for reaching your target customers. This could include online and offline channels, such as e-commerce, retail stores, and direct sales.
• Develop a sales and marketing plan: Once you have a clear understanding of your target market, product positioning, and distribution channels, you can develop a sales and marketing plan that includes tactics such as advertising, public relations, content marketing, and events.
• Set key performance indicators (KPIs): These are metrics that you can use to measure the success of your GTM strategy. Examples of KPIs could include website traffic, number of leads generated, sales, and customer retention.
• Continuously Monitor and Optimize: Once your GTM strategy is in place, it’s important to continuously monitor and optimize it based on the data and feedback you receive. This will help you to adapt to changes in your market and customer needs and fine-tune your approach.

It’s worth noting that creating a GTM strategy is an iterative process. You may need to adjust and refine your strategy as you learn more about your target market and customers, or as the market changes. And also, these steps are general guidelines and the actual steps you need to take might be different based on the specific situation of your company.

Nilakantasrinivasan J

Nilakantasrinivasan J (Neil) (born 1974) is an Indian author, consultant and guide, focused on the subject of client centricity, B2B client centric business growth, business transformation & analytics. Nilakantasrinivasan J (Neil) is the author of 3 books, The Client Centric Protagonist, The Master Book for Lean Six Sigma & A Little Book for Customer Experience.

#nilakantasrinivasan-j #canopus-business-management-group #B2B-client-centric-growth #Business-growth

Is there a difference between Six Sigma and Lean Six Sigma?

Lean and Six Sigma are close cousins in the process improvement world and they have lot of commonalities. Now we will talk about the difference between Six Sigma and Lean Six Sigma.

Six Sigma uses a data centric analytical approach to problem solving and process improvements.  That means, there would be time and effort in data collection and analysis. While this sounds very logical to any problem solving approach, there can be practical challenges.

For example, some times we may need data and analysis to be even prove the obvious. That is lame.

On the other hand, Lean Six Sigma brings in some of the principles of Lean. Lean is largely a pragmatic and prescriptive approach. Which implies that we will look at data and practically validate that problem and move on to prescriptive solutions.

Thus combining Lean with Six Sigma, helps in reducing the time and effort needed to analyze or improve a situation. Lean will bring in a set of solutions that are tried and tested for a situation. For example, if you have high inventory, that Lean would suggest you to implement Kanban.

Lean is appealing because most often it simplifies the situation and that may not be always true with Six Sigma.  However the flip side to Lean is that if the system have been improved several times and reached a certain level of performance and consistency, Lean can bring out any further improvement unless we approach the problem with Six Sigma lens, using extensive data collection and analysis.

Looking at the body of knowledge of Six Sigma and Lean Six Sigma, you will find that Lean Six Sigma courses following tools:

• Cost of Poor Quality
• Lean Principles
• Definition, Origin, Principles & Goals of Lean
• Value, Value Stream, Concept of Muda(Waste) & Categories of Waste
• 7 Types of Wastes, How to Identify them, & Waste Identification Template
• Value Stream Mapping (VSM), Symbols, Benefits & Procedure
• Push System, Pull System, Single Piece Flow, 5S, Kaizen, SMED, Poka-Yoke
• Types of Poka-Yoke – Shut Down, Prevention, Warning, Instructions
• Heijunka & Visual Control

Nilakantasrinivasan J

#nilakantasrinivasan-j #canopus-business-management-group #B2B-client-centric-growth #Lean-six-sigma #six-sigma-green-belt-certification #six-sigma-black-belt-certification

I notice that most people misunderstanding ‘Design Thinking’ for ‘Design of Six Sigma(DFSS)’. The latter is an approach within Six Sigma to develop new products or services. In reality Design Thinking and DFSS are different animals, but not mutually exclusive.

Here’s how i see it:

Six Sigma offers a systematic way to improve or design products/service. It brings tools, methodology and rigor into the process.

Design thinking is the way designers think! Designers have nothing in front of them, but they visualize, experiment, hypothesize, iterate and iterate before coming up with the final output. There are variety of tools they use such as Journey Mapping, Mind Mapping, Visualization, Story boarding, Co-creation, Assumption Testing, Rapid Prototyping (& piloting), learning launch, etc.,

The being a practitioner of both these approaches, I think ONE most significant difference is that – Six Sigma thinking process is linear (but allows iteration). On the other hand, Design Thinking process is iterative (but allows linear progression).

Second difference is that Six Sigma emphasizes more of data rigor (& less of creative rigor – imaginative aspects). Design Thinking emphasizes more of imaginative rigor (& less of data rigor).

So it must be obvious that both are not certainly mutually exclusive, but they are very different!

Design Thinking has seeing a lot of traction in Service Sector, because traditional service design never followed any rigorous process.

For more www.sixsigmacertificationcourse.com  and www.collaborat.com

As a Management Consultant, clients expect you to diagnose, analysis and synthesize to solve their problems or help them create new opportunities.

Tools of Lean Six Sigma help to challenge and change the status-quo.

So there should be no doubt about its relevance to your career. It will  certainly help you in long run.

Management Consulting Firms expect candidates to be familiar with several management approaches and Lean Six Sigma is one of them. There are many more such as ToC, System Thinking, Design Thinking, etc.,

Well, if your question is about getting through in the interview of a management consulting firm, then I should confess that having a professional certification will not be the only reason to hire you.  Think about it this way, if there is a better candidate without a professional certification, how much does it take for a top notch management consulting firm to provide them the training and get them certified?

That’s exactly what a top notch management consulting firm has done. It has got over 100 of its associates including Consultants, Senior Consultants, Managers and Directors Lean Six Sigma Green Belt Certified by

www.sixsigmacertificationcourse.com

Six Sigma has been a successful management approach, and a philosophy for many leading global enterprises. Let’s understand Six Sigma Process – in other words – Six Sigma Deployment Approach. While the deployment of Six Sigma depends on several factors; the following approach explains Six Sigma process in its simplest form. Six Sigma as a management discipline puts customer’s interest ahead of others. The process of gathering customer requirements is called as Voice of Customer (VOC). A good deployment program starts with VOC. Customer requirements directly translate into business performance standards. In Six Sigma and many quality management approaches, these performance standards are called as Customer Specification Limits. Operational metrics and performance measures like KPIs are created based on customer requirements. Such operational measures or KPIs are called as Critical To Quality (CTQ) metrics in Six Sigma. Output of existing processes is measured against customer requirements. This becomes a benchmark of performance. In Six Sigma, this step is called as Assessment of Current Process Capability. In case an end-to-end process is not capable of consistently meeting customer requirements, and produces high volume of defects; it is taken up for improvement. Process improvement approach used in Six Sigma is called as DMAIC. It is the acronym of Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control: a 5 step improvement approach. In this manner, Six Sigma aims to link Customers, Business Processes, CTQs and process improvement all together. The real power of a Six Sigma Process is in consistently and iteratively following the above activities. Thus, an organization following a Six Sigma Process:

1. Systematically and regularly gathers VOC
2. Measures its process capability
3. Identifies improvement opportunities
4. Uses DMAIC to improve its processes

Lean Six Sigma Project – A beginner’s guide is a series that explains how to run Lean Six Sigma projects in detail. The biggest benefit of combining Lean and Six Sigma is to deliver more value to customers and business. In order for a Six Sigma Green Belt to be successful with a project, they must know what’s to be done, and how to accomplish them! This guide is a step-by-step procedure to execute the 5 phases of a Lean Six Sigma project.

Lean Six Sigma improvement projects follow 5 phase DMAIC approach. A six sigma project is not an academic exercise, but its primary objective is to impact customers, business, and employees positively. Thus stakeholder buy-in and sponsorship are very important factors for its success. Every project should have at least one project sponsor (One sponsor is just fine, two is OK, but greater than that is undesirable). The project sponsor is usually the process owner or a senior management executive who is accountable for the overall project and its success. They take the lead in identifying the project & its objectives, and in team formation. The team composition should be cross-functional. The sponsor also has to decide whether this Six Sigma project should be led by a Black Belt or Green Belt. Once identified, the respective Six Sigma Belt plays the lead role in the project. It is their responsibility to complete the project on time, and deliver desired results. Now, for the remaining part of this beginner’s guide, let’s assume that it is a Lean Six Sigma Green Belt Project. The duration of a typical project should be between 3 to 4 months. The overall project plan for all Six Sigma improvement projects are mapped to Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control. There are defined deliverables for each of these phases which have to be accomplished before progressing further. At the end of each phase, a formal tollgate is used to stage a gate review by the sponsors. Various Six Sigma concepts and tools can be applied to progress and accomplish desired phase-wise outcomes. In order to make sure the project meets the timeline, and set-out objectives; the Green belt and team members are to meet regularly. In addition to this, Six Sigma Green Belts are mentored by Black Belts or Master Black Belts. In a nutshell, following are the broad outlines for each of the DMAIC phases of Lean Six Sigma Project:

• Define – Identify the project objective and define the problem to be solved
• Measure – Collect necessary data regarding the problem and establish current performance
• Analyze – Use the data collected to analyze and screen factors which are the root causes for a problem
• Improve – Identify suitable solutions to overcome the root causes
• Control – Implement the solutions and monitor its results

Next, as a part of this beginner’s guide, let’s understand how to accomplish the deliverable of the Define phase here

Define Phase is the first phase of Lean Six Sigma Project. Following are the deliverable of this phase:

Project Charter is an important document that summarizes the purpose, current scenario & goal, measures of success (CTQ), project’s scope, quantitative & indicative project benefits, and team members. This is the most important document, as it creates a term of reference for this entire Lean Six Sigma project. In order to prepare the project charter, several meetings and preparatory steps may be needed. In some cases, gathering the Voice of Customer (VOC) may be required to even understand the problem. Project Scoping determines exactly how the project will contribute to overall business, whether the efforts will be diverted to maximum impact area, team composition, financial resources required, etc. In Six Sigma, a tool called ‘In-Frame Out-Frame’ is used to decide on the scope. Six Sigma Green Belt should closely work with the Project Sponsor to complete the Project Charter.

Identify the Project CTQ

CTQ refers to Critical to Quality metric. This is a measure of success for the project. Usually, there is only one CTQ for DMAIC projects. It can either be a measure of efficiency or effectiveness. However, it is a key performance indicator for Voice of Customer or Voice of Business. Further, it should be measurable. Usually, its indicative or accurate current performance is reported in the project charter. The above two deliverable run parallel, and they are of significant importance because they mark the formal kick-off of the project, team member induction, Lean Six Sigma training (if not included earlier).

Create Process Maps

In order to understand the end-to-end process; a detailed process document is created by the team. However, in case such documentation already exists, then it becomes easy for the project team members to revisit it.

Six Sigma Green Belt can involve all her team members in this activity. Two best ways of mapping a process are to interview all the parties involved in the process or to conduct a work-out session with all parties. Latter requires good facilitation skills. Once the process maps have been created, the team can use them to identify the bottlenecks, challenges, issues, inputs & outputs, delays, etc. Essentially, it can be used to decide which part of the process is important, and needs to be introspected. On completion of the above deliverable, a formal define tollgate review is conducted. Then the project moves to Measure Phase.

Measure Phase of Lean Six Sigma Project is the second phase. Following are the deliverable of this phase:

In the measure phase of a Lean Six Sigma Project, the team brainstorms to identify all possible causes or reasons for the occurrence of the problem. Thus, there is a direct linkage between a project charter and this deliverable. Fish-bone diagram is a structured brainstorming method used to carry out this activity. Fish-bone diagram is also called as Ishikawa or Cause & Effect diagram. After completing this brainstorming, the team applies the 5-why technique to further explore the underlying causes for all the reasons identified in the fish-bone diagram. At the end of these two activities, the team has an exhaustive list of possible causes for the problem. Usually there are around 50~100 possible causes for the problem. It is the responsibility of Six Sigma Green Belt to facilitate these activities. As a next step, using their process knowledge and experience, the team has to agree on few causes; which potentially cause the problem. There are several methods to do this, but the most popular method is the use of Cause & Effect Matrix (C-E Matrix). Potential Causes are suspects that are causing the problem. However, before acting on them, the team needs to gather data or facts to validate them.

Data Collection plays a very important role in all Six Sigma projects. But before collecting data, the team has to assess if the measurement system (measuring instrument, appraiser & environment in which measurement happens) is accurate and precise. Hence the team has to perform Measurement System Analysis (MSA) – aka Gage R&R. Once the team ascertains that the measurement is good, then a data collection plan is prepared. Data Collection Plan (DCP) includes the measures whose data needs to be collected, how much data to collect, data source, and who will collect the data, etc. While the entire team can participate in this activity, Six Sigma Green Belt has to take a lead role, as this will involve technical concepts of Gage R&R covered in the training program. Unlike conventional data collection; in Lean Six Sigma projects, data is collected on both the CTQ and the potential causes identified in a Cause & Effect Matrix. Due to the quantum of data involved in most businesses, it isn’t practically viable to collect data of the entire population. Hence the team has to resort to statistical sampling methods. As a next step, data collection is executed. From time-to-time a Six Sigma project team needs to validate the data collected. Sometimes, the data collectors need to be trained and retrained. Once the data collection is complete, it is ready for a process capability assessment. Usually many projects get delayed because of poor data quality or delay in collecting sufficient data. When a Six Sigma Green Belt takes special care, this activity can get completed on time.

Establish Process Capability

Process Capability is the ability of the process to deliver as per customer requirement. There are various process capability indices, but in Lean Six Sigma projects, sigma capability is the most popular measure. This exercise gives an accurate report on the current process performance. As these indices are covered in the training program, Six Sigma Green Belt has to take a lead role in conducting this study. The output of Process Capability study can be used to validate the process objectives and anticipated benefits in the charter. If needed, the Lean Six Sigma project charter can be revisited. On completion of the above deliverable, and a formal Measure Phase tollgate review, the team is ready to move into Analyze phase.

Proposed solutions can be a new process, technology change, policy changes, alterations of inputs, measurement system refinement, customer, employee or vendor education, etc. In such cases, either revised process map, future state value stream mapping,  etc., may need to be proceeded. The solution that the team has selected should directly impact the CTQ of the project. Six Sigma Green Belt should validate this.

Before implementing solutions, the Six Sigma Green Belt needs to ensure that the proposed solutions are complete and well refined. This will ensure that there are no delays, rework during implementation, and the full impact on CTQ is derived. In order to do this, a tool called Failure Modes Effect Analysis (FMEA) is used. The main purpose of this tool is to assess all the risks involved with a solution, and how to mitigate them by refining the solution before implementation. Risk Priority Number (RPN) derived from FMEA helps in prioritizing the risks and acting on them in a systematic manner.

In Lean Six Sigma Projects, it is an important step to statistically validate the impact on CTQ (before implementation & after Implementation). Hypothesis tests like 2-t test, ANOVA, Chi-square tests, etc., are used to perform this statistical validation. These tests help to identify if the improvement is significant or marginal in nature. Six Sigma Green Belt should be able to select and perform appropriate tests using statistical softwares. On successful completion of these deliverable and formal Improve tollgate review, the Lean Six Sigma project team is ready to move to the Control phase.

Establish Statistical Process Control

As a part of the control plan, the method of monitoring has to be specific. Statistical Process Control uses well known Control Charts or Shewhart Charts. A control chart, computes the lower and upper control limits as a threshold to monitor any process measures; like CTQ. As the threshold is breached, the reaction plan has to be triggered. As the name suggests, it is a chart that is based on the principles of statistics, and hence there are no false alarms. Instilling the discipline of creating control charts and monitoring as per Control Plan is part of the rigor of a Lean Six Sigma Green Belt.

Benefits Computation & Closure

The last deliverable of the Lean Six Sigma project is Benefits Computation and Closure. But before that, the project is monitored for enough time (2 weeks to 2 months) to ensure that benefits are sustained. When the Lean Six Sigma Team is satisfied with the results, then the improved process is formally handed-over to the process owner. Financial and non-financial benefits are computed based on actual results, and a formal sign-off from the finance manager and sponsor is obtained. This will be the project closure. The Lean Six Sigma team celebrates its success; distributes rewards for active team members; and finally the Six Sigma Green Belt Certification Ceremony is undertaken.

Analyze Phase of Lean Six Sigma Project is the third phase. Following are the deliverable of this phase that Six Sigma Green Belt should deliver with her team:

• Statistically validate root causes
• Perform Value Stream Mapping & Process Value Analysis
• Control & Impact Matrix

In a recent Lean Six Sigma Project kick-off meeting of one of my clients, after the teams presented their project charters, the business leader made an extempore announcement that the best and most successful Lean Six Sigma project will receive a special recognition and the team members will be lucratively rewarded.

Immediately few of them wanted to know what criteria will be used for selection. The business leader indicated that I will be the one who will define the criteria for successful Lean Six Sigma Project.

Factors that I consider among the criteria for success of Lean Six Sigma Projects are arranged in the descending order of their importance in the below list:

• Project Scope – Lean Six Sigma projects without well defined scope are bound to fail, but they end up creating a lot of mess around.  Scope usually refers to the boundaries of any project. A poorly defined project is one which hasn’t balanced the Project Goal, Scope and Timelines. Also, poorly communicated scope and not defining what is out of scope are equally important and to be addressed.
• Retains interest and commitment of the resources – Improvement projects are successful when its team members contribute their best. Lean Six Sigma projects usually challenge the existing paradigm. Hence without whole hearted and continued participation of the team members, no project will be successful. The sponsor/champion and the Green Belt/Black Belt are entrusted to retain the interest and commitment of the resources.
• Attracts adequate buy-in from key stakeholders – Stakeholders of any project could either be the decision makers, important players who influence the decisions or even impacted parties. Successful Lean Six Sigma projects will have to manage the expectations of all the above stakeholders from time to time and create adequate buy-in. Rather than focusing too much on technical root cause analysis, the emphasis should be on how Lean Six Sigma project can bring about mid-to-large scale change in the organization.
• Flawless execution– Immaterial of the breadth and depth of the analysis done in any Lean Six Sigma project, what sticks out is execution. Well led and implemented project is bound to be successful, as even the quality of data collected and analysis is a function of the flawless execution. Adherence to weekly team meetings, project milestones and tollgates reviews are some simple and easy signs to evaluate execution. Further unbiased data collection and analysis, open minded assessment of solutions, in depth piloting and sustained monitoring are additional measures of flawless execution.
• Identifiable impact on customers – As the proof of the pudding is in the eating, so is the success of any Lean Six Sigma in positive impact it creates on customers. Usually organizations evaluate the success of projects based on the performance of the CTQ (before-after studies). While this is definitely a good way to assess the impact, more often than not, such movements in CTQs aren’t felt by the customers. Considering several other business parameters to validate the impact of the CTQ, including post improvement Voice of Customer may be a very good method. For example, a reduction in defects certainly will reduce the rework effort, increase productivity, reduce complaints, apart from increasing customer satisfaction.
• Making a discovery – Any successful Lean Six Sigma project should un-earth something new, make a discovery about the problem. A project without a discovery could mean we are fixing obvious things. In order to ensure the project team makes a discovery, the quality of work done in the Measure and Analyze phase have to be evaluated. Have the teams identified all possible causes to the problem? Have they collected data of good quality and quantity? Have they holistically analyzed the data to make the discovery? And finally what is the discovery?

Based on my experience with Lean Six Sigma in the last 2 decades, I would consider these 6 factors as significant elements of successful project.